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Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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\n

What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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Latest

\n

Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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\n

Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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Latest

\n

The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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\n

Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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\n

Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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\n
\n\n\n\n

Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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\n

\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\n\n\n\n

Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\n\n\n\n

Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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\n

\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\n\n\n\n

Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
Search

Latest

\n

\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\n\n\n\n

Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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Latest

\n

Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\n\n\n\n

Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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\n

Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\n\n\n\n

Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
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\n
  1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
  2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
  3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


    \n\n\n\n

    Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

    The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

    Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
    Search

    Latest

    \n

    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


      \n\n\n\n

      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

      Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
      Search

      Latest

      \n

      \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
      2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
      3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

        Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

        \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

        \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


        \n\n\n\n

        Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
        \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

        Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

        The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

        Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

        What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

        Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

        So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

        Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

        In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

        Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
        Search

        Latest

        \n

        Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

        \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
        2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
        3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

          Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

          \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

          \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


          \n\n\n\n

          Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
          \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

          Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

          The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

          Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

          What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

          Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

          So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

          Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

          In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

          Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
          Search

          Latest

          \n

          \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

          \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
          2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
          3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

            Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


            \n\n\n\n

            Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
            \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

            Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

            The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

            Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

            What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

            Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

            So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

            Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

            Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
            Search

            Latest

            \n

            \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
            2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
            3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

              Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

              \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

              \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


              \n\n\n\n

              Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
              \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

              Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

              The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

              Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

              What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

              Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

              So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

              Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

              Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
              Search

              Latest

              \n

              Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

              \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

              \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

              1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
              2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
              3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                \n\n\n\n

                Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
                Search

                Latest

                \n

                Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                  Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                  \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                  \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                  \n\n\n\n

                  Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                  \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                  Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                  The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                  Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                  What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                  Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                  So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                  Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                  Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
                  Search

                  Latest

                  \n

                  The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                  \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                  \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                  2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                  3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                    The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Page 10 of 12 1 9 10 11 12
                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n
                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n
                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n
                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n
                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n
                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    To revitalize its corporate culture, Telstra will need to bring its whole workforce on board \u2014 not an easy task for a company of thousands. The executives visited HPE, LinkedIn, and Slack to learn how the trend of workforce enablement is ensuring employees are connected to a company\u2019s goals, engaged in achieving them, and productive in so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Enabling the Workforces of the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    To revitalize its corporate culture, Telstra will need to bring its whole workforce on board \u2014 not an easy task for a company of thousands. The executives visited HPE, LinkedIn, and Slack to learn how the trend of workforce enablement is ensuring employees are connected to a company\u2019s goals, engaged in achieving them, and productive in so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Cisco:<\/strong> in order to succeed in the intensely dynamic tech industry, large companies must prioritize innovation and be willing to take risks by investing in new technologies and partnerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Enabling the Workforces of the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    To revitalize its corporate culture, Telstra will need to bring its whole workforce on board \u2014 not an easy task for a company of thousands. The executives visited HPE, LinkedIn, and Slack to learn how the trend of workforce enablement is ensuring employees are connected to a company\u2019s goals, engaged in achieving them, and productive in so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    The Telstra executives also visited Cisco<\/strong><\/a>, another telecommunications giant leaning into the technologies of the future. For Cisco, corporate innovation is so critical that the company has ten dedicated \u201cInnovation Centers\u201d spread around the globe \u2014 each focused on a different industry like Health, Education, or Finance. Cisco uses these Innovation Centers to explore new transformative technologies like cloud computing and IoT, engage in rapid prototyping, and partner with startups, accelerators, and universities in bringing high-tech solutions to general markets. As the Telstra executives learned from Cisco\u2019s Corporate Strategic Innovation Group, the company\u2019s innovation strategy is simple: \u201cbuild, buy, partner, invest, and co-develop.\u201d This strategy has allowed Cisco to compete in the constantly-changing networking space, and given the Telstra executives a clear path forward for doing the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Cisco:<\/strong> in order to succeed in the intensely dynamic tech industry, large companies must prioritize innovation and be willing to take risks by investing in new technologies and partnerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Enabling the Workforces of the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    To revitalize its corporate culture, Telstra will need to bring its whole workforce on board \u2014 not an easy task for a company of thousands. The executives visited HPE, LinkedIn, and Slack to learn how the trend of workforce enablement is ensuring employees are connected to a company\u2019s goals, engaged in achieving them, and productive in so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    The tech industry is so dynamic that the moment you stop taking risks is the moment you get left behind.<\/p>Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    The Telstra executives also visited Cisco<\/strong><\/a>, another telecommunications giant leaning into the technologies of the future. For Cisco, corporate innovation is so critical that the company has ten dedicated \u201cInnovation Centers\u201d spread around the globe \u2014 each focused on a different industry like Health, Education, or Finance. Cisco uses these Innovation Centers to explore new transformative technologies like cloud computing and IoT, engage in rapid prototyping, and partner with startups, accelerators, and universities in bringing high-tech solutions to general markets. As the Telstra executives learned from Cisco\u2019s Corporate Strategic Innovation Group, the company\u2019s innovation strategy is simple: \u201cbuild, buy, partner, invest, and co-develop.\u201d This strategy has allowed Cisco to compete in the constantly-changing networking space, and given the Telstra executives a clear path forward for doing the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Cisco:<\/strong> in order to succeed in the intensely dynamic tech industry, large companies must prioritize innovation and be willing to take risks by investing in new technologies and partnerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Enabling the Workforces of the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    To revitalize its corporate culture, Telstra will need to bring its whole workforce on board \u2014 not an easy task for a company of thousands. The executives visited HPE, LinkedIn, and Slack to learn how the trend of workforce enablement is ensuring employees are connected to a company\u2019s goals, engaged in achieving them, and productive in so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    At Google<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra team met with an Innovation Evangelist on the company\u2019s approach to innovation, startup engagement practices, and talent retention. The executives found this meeting \u201coutstanding,\u201d as Google\u2019s ability to steer a massive tech company in new directions is exactly what Telstra hopes to achieve with its own business. As the executives learned, Google is not immune to the classic \u201cinnovator\u2019s dilemma\u201d<\/a> of deciding between improving existing products or investing in new ones. But by prioritizing a spirit of innovation and accepting that failures are inevitable (and instructional), Google keeps its top talent engaged and in constant pursuit of the company\u2019s next success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The tech industry is so dynamic that the moment you stop taking risks is the moment you get left behind.<\/p>Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    The Telstra executives also visited Cisco<\/strong><\/a>, another telecommunications giant leaning into the technologies of the future. For Cisco, corporate innovation is so critical that the company has ten dedicated \u201cInnovation Centers\u201d spread around the globe \u2014 each focused on a different industry like Health, Education, or Finance. Cisco uses these Innovation Centers to explore new transformative technologies like cloud computing and IoT, engage in rapid prototyping, and partner with startups, accelerators, and universities in bringing high-tech solutions to general markets. As the Telstra executives learned from Cisco\u2019s Corporate Strategic Innovation Group, the company\u2019s innovation strategy is simple: \u201cbuild, buy, partner, invest, and co-develop.\u201d This strategy has allowed Cisco to compete in the constantly-changing networking space, and given the Telstra executives a clear path forward for doing the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Cisco:<\/strong> in order to succeed in the intensely dynamic tech industry, large companies must prioritize innovation and be willing to take risks by investing in new technologies and partnerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Enabling the Workforces of the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    To revitalize its corporate culture, Telstra will need to bring its whole workforce on board \u2014 not an easy task for a company of thousands. The executives visited HPE, LinkedIn, and Slack to learn how the trend of workforce enablement is ensuring employees are connected to a company\u2019s goals, engaged in achieving them, and productive in so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    Telstra wanted to know how large organizations can pursue new opportunities without ignoring their traditional businesses. To start their program, the executives saw how giant tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Cisco maintain corporate cultures that encourage innovation and experimentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At Google<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra team met with an Innovation Evangelist on the company\u2019s approach to innovation, startup engagement practices, and talent retention. The executives found this meeting \u201coutstanding,\u201d as Google\u2019s ability to steer a massive tech company in new directions is exactly what Telstra hopes to achieve with its own business. As the executives learned, Google is not immune to the classic \u201cinnovator\u2019s dilemma\u201d<\/a> of deciding between improving existing products or investing in new ones. But by prioritizing a spirit of innovation and accepting that failures are inevitable (and instructional), Google keeps its top talent engaged and in constant pursuit of the company\u2019s next success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The tech industry is so dynamic that the moment you stop taking risks is the moment you get left behind.<\/p>Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    The Telstra executives also visited Cisco<\/strong><\/a>, another telecommunications giant leaning into the technologies of the future. For Cisco, corporate innovation is so critical that the company has ten dedicated \u201cInnovation Centers\u201d spread around the globe \u2014 each focused on a different industry like Health, Education, or Finance. Cisco uses these Innovation Centers to explore new transformative technologies like cloud computing and IoT, engage in rapid prototyping, and partner with startups, accelerators, and universities in bringing high-tech solutions to general markets. As the Telstra executives learned from Cisco\u2019s Corporate Strategic Innovation Group, the company\u2019s innovation strategy is simple: \u201cbuild, buy, partner, invest, and co-develop.\u201d This strategy has allowed Cisco to compete in the constantly-changing networking space, and given the Telstra executives a clear path forward for doing the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Cisco:<\/strong> in order to succeed in the intensely dynamic tech industry, large companies must prioritize innovation and be willing to take risks by investing in new technologies and partnerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Enabling the Workforces of the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    To revitalize its corporate culture, Telstra will need to bring its whole workforce on board \u2014 not an easy task for a company of thousands. The executives visited HPE, LinkedIn, and Slack to learn how the trend of workforce enablement is ensuring employees are connected to a company\u2019s goals, engaged in achieving them, and productive in so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    \n

                    How Large Companies Keep Innovating<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra wanted to know how large organizations can pursue new opportunities without ignoring their traditional businesses. To start their program, the executives saw how giant tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Cisco maintain corporate cultures that encourage innovation and experimentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At Google<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra team met with an Innovation Evangelist on the company\u2019s approach to innovation, startup engagement practices, and talent retention. The executives found this meeting \u201coutstanding,\u201d as Google\u2019s ability to steer a massive tech company in new directions is exactly what Telstra hopes to achieve with its own business. As the executives learned, Google is not immune to the classic \u201cinnovator\u2019s dilemma\u201d<\/a> of deciding between improving existing products or investing in new ones. But by prioritizing a spirit of innovation and accepting that failures are inevitable (and instructional), Google keeps its top talent engaged and in constant pursuit of the company\u2019s next success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The tech industry is so dynamic that the moment you stop taking risks is the moment you get left behind.<\/p>Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    The Telstra executives also visited Cisco<\/strong><\/a>, another telecommunications giant leaning into the technologies of the future. For Cisco, corporate innovation is so critical that the company has ten dedicated \u201cInnovation Centers\u201d spread around the globe \u2014 each focused on a different industry like Health, Education, or Finance. Cisco uses these Innovation Centers to explore new transformative technologies like cloud computing and IoT, engage in rapid prototyping, and partner with startups, accelerators, and universities in bringing high-tech solutions to general markets. As the Telstra executives learned from Cisco\u2019s Corporate Strategic Innovation Group, the company\u2019s innovation strategy is simple: \u201cbuild, buy, partner, invest, and co-develop.\u201d This strategy has allowed Cisco to compete in the constantly-changing networking space, and given the Telstra executives a clear path forward for doing the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Cisco:<\/strong> in order to succeed in the intensely dynamic tech industry, large companies must prioritize innovation and be willing to take risks by investing in new technologies and partnerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Enabling the Workforces of the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    To revitalize its corporate culture, Telstra will need to bring its whole workforce on board \u2014 not an easy task for a company of thousands. The executives visited HPE, LinkedIn, and Slack to learn how the trend of workforce enablement is ensuring employees are connected to a company\u2019s goals, engaged in achieving them, and productive in so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                    Latest

                    \n

                    We created Telstra a varied program targeting these priorities, and introduced them to the companies and experts addressing them in Silicon Valley today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/1KfBPeks76U\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    How Large Companies Keep Innovating<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra wanted to know how large organizations can pursue new opportunities without ignoring their traditional businesses. To start their program, the executives saw how giant tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Cisco maintain corporate cultures that encourage innovation and experimentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At Google<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra team met with an Innovation Evangelist on the company\u2019s approach to innovation, startup engagement practices, and talent retention. The executives found this meeting \u201coutstanding,\u201d as Google\u2019s ability to steer a massive tech company in new directions is exactly what Telstra hopes to achieve with its own business. As the executives learned, Google is not immune to the classic \u201cinnovator\u2019s dilemma\u201d<\/a> of deciding between improving existing products or investing in new ones. But by prioritizing a spirit of innovation and accepting that failures are inevitable (and instructional), Google keeps its top talent engaged and in constant pursuit of the company\u2019s next success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The tech industry is so dynamic that the moment you stop taking risks is the moment you get left behind.<\/p>Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    The Telstra executives also visited Cisco<\/strong><\/a>, another telecommunications giant leaning into the technologies of the future. For Cisco, corporate innovation is so critical that the company has ten dedicated \u201cInnovation Centers\u201d spread around the globe \u2014 each focused on a different industry like Health, Education, or Finance. Cisco uses these Innovation Centers to explore new transformative technologies like cloud computing and IoT, engage in rapid prototyping, and partner with startups, accelerators, and universities in bringing high-tech solutions to general markets. As the Telstra executives learned from Cisco\u2019s Corporate Strategic Innovation Group, the company\u2019s innovation strategy is simple: \u201cbuild, buy, partner, invest, and co-develop.\u201d This strategy has allowed Cisco to compete in the constantly-changing networking space, and given the Telstra executives a clear path forward for doing the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Cisco:<\/strong> in order to succeed in the intensely dynamic tech industry, large companies must prioritize innovation and be willing to take risks by investing in new technologies and partnerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Enabling the Workforces of the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    To revitalize its corporate culture, Telstra will need to bring its whole workforce on board \u2014 not an easy task for a company of thousands. The executives visited HPE, LinkedIn, and Slack to learn how the trend of workforce enablement is ensuring employees are connected to a company\u2019s goals, engaged in achieving them, and productive in so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                    \n\n\n\n

                    To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                    Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                    Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                    We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                    As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                    The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                    Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                    Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                    \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                    \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                    The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                    \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                    2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                    3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                      The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                    Search

                    Latest

                    \n
                    1. How do large companies stay lean and innovate?<\/li>
                    2. How do traditional businesses utilize new technology to ready their workforce for the future?<\/li>
                    3. How do companies use AI\/BI to make more meaningful business decisions?<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      We created Telstra a varied program targeting these priorities, and introduced them to the companies and experts addressing them in Silicon Valley today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/1KfBPeks76U\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      How Large Companies Keep Innovating<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Telstra wanted to know how large organizations can pursue new opportunities without ignoring their traditional businesses. To start their program, the executives saw how giant tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Cisco maintain corporate cultures that encourage innovation and experimentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      At Google<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra team met with an Innovation Evangelist on the company\u2019s approach to innovation, startup engagement practices, and talent retention. The executives found this meeting \u201coutstanding,\u201d as Google\u2019s ability to steer a massive tech company in new directions is exactly what Telstra hopes to achieve with its own business. As the executives learned, Google is not immune to the classic \u201cinnovator\u2019s dilemma\u201d<\/a> of deciding between improving existing products or investing in new ones. But by prioritizing a spirit of innovation and accepting that failures are inevitable (and instructional), Google keeps its top talent engaged and in constant pursuit of the company\u2019s next success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      The tech industry is so dynamic that the moment you stop taking risks is the moment you get left behind.<\/p>Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                      The Telstra executives also visited Cisco<\/strong><\/a>, another telecommunications giant leaning into the technologies of the future. For Cisco, corporate innovation is so critical that the company has ten dedicated \u201cInnovation Centers\u201d spread around the globe \u2014 each focused on a different industry like Health, Education, or Finance. Cisco uses these Innovation Centers to explore new transformative technologies like cloud computing and IoT, engage in rapid prototyping, and partner with startups, accelerators, and universities in bringing high-tech solutions to general markets. As the Telstra executives learned from Cisco\u2019s Corporate Strategic Innovation Group, the company\u2019s innovation strategy is simple: \u201cbuild, buy, partner, invest, and co-develop.\u201d This strategy has allowed Cisco to compete in the constantly-changing networking space, and given the Telstra executives a clear path forward for doing the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Key takeaway from Google and Cisco:<\/strong> in order to succeed in the intensely dynamic tech industry, large companies must prioritize innovation and be willing to take risks by investing in new technologies and partnerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Enabling the Workforces of the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      To revitalize its corporate culture, Telstra will need to bring its whole workforce on board \u2014 not an easy task for a company of thousands. The executives visited HPE, LinkedIn, and Slack to learn how the trend of workforce enablement is ensuring employees are connected to a company\u2019s goals, engaged in achieving them, and productive in so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                      \n\n\n\n

                      To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                      \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                      Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                      Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                      We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                      As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                      The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                      Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                      Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                      \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                      \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                      The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                      \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                      2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                      3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                        Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                        \n\n\n\n

                        Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                        \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                        Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                        The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                        Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                      Silicon Valley companies are doing business differently. By fostering innovative corporate cultures, arming their workforces with digital tools and organizational frameworks, and leveraging data to make better business decisions, tech giants and startups alike are defining how successful companies operate in the 21st century. To learn about these trends and how to apply them to their own business, a group of a dozen Telstra executives came to SVIC for a custom, 3-day immersion program<\/a> focused on three key learning priorities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      1. How do large companies stay lean and innovate?<\/li>
                      2. How do traditional businesses utilize new technology to ready their workforce for the future?<\/li>
                      3. How do companies use AI\/BI to make more meaningful business decisions?<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                        We created Telstra a varied program targeting these priorities, and introduced them to the companies and experts addressing them in Silicon Valley today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/1KfBPeks76U\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                        How Large Companies Keep Innovating<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        Telstra wanted to know how large organizations can pursue new opportunities without ignoring their traditional businesses. To start their program, the executives saw how giant tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Cisco maintain corporate cultures that encourage innovation and experimentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        At Google<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra team met with an Innovation Evangelist on the company\u2019s approach to innovation, startup engagement practices, and talent retention. The executives found this meeting \u201coutstanding,\u201d as Google\u2019s ability to steer a massive tech company in new directions is exactly what Telstra hopes to achieve with its own business. As the executives learned, Google is not immune to the classic \u201cinnovator\u2019s dilemma\u201d<\/a> of deciding between improving existing products or investing in new ones. But by prioritizing a spirit of innovation and accepting that failures are inevitable (and instructional), Google keeps its top talent engaged and in constant pursuit of the company\u2019s next success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        The tech industry is so dynamic that the moment you stop taking risks is the moment you get left behind.<\/p>Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                        The Telstra executives also visited Cisco<\/strong><\/a>, another telecommunications giant leaning into the technologies of the future. For Cisco, corporate innovation is so critical that the company has ten dedicated \u201cInnovation Centers\u201d spread around the globe \u2014 each focused on a different industry like Health, Education, or Finance. Cisco uses these Innovation Centers to explore new transformative technologies like cloud computing and IoT, engage in rapid prototyping, and partner with startups, accelerators, and universities in bringing high-tech solutions to general markets. As the Telstra executives learned from Cisco\u2019s Corporate Strategic Innovation Group, the company\u2019s innovation strategy is simple: \u201cbuild, buy, partner, invest, and co-develop.\u201d This strategy has allowed Cisco to compete in the constantly-changing networking space, and given the Telstra executives a clear path forward for doing the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Key takeaway from Google and Cisco:<\/strong> in order to succeed in the intensely dynamic tech industry, large companies must prioritize innovation and be willing to take risks by investing in new technologies and partnerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Enabling the Workforces of the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        To revitalize its corporate culture, Telstra will need to bring its whole workforce on board \u2014 not an easy task for a company of thousands. The executives visited HPE, LinkedIn, and Slack to learn how the trend of workforce enablement is ensuring employees are connected to a company\u2019s goals, engaged in achieving them, and productive in so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                        \n\n\n\n

                        To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                        In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                        <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                        \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                        Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                        \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                        Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                        Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                        We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                        Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                        As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                        The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                        \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                        Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                        \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                        Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                        \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                        \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                        The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                        \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                        2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                        3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                          Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                          \n\n\n\n

                          Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                          \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                          Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                          The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                          Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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                        \n

                        Telstra<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 the largest telecommunications company in Australia \u2014 is working to stay ahead. With a worldwide presence of 30,000 employees and 150 subsidiaries, the company has had to adapt its business model to new tech before: it began life in 1854 as an operator of telegraph lines. But the technological changes disrupting their market today pose an existential threat, not just to Telstra but to traditional businesses all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        Silicon Valley companies are doing business differently. By fostering innovative corporate cultures, arming their workforces with digital tools and organizational frameworks, and leveraging data to make better business decisions, tech giants and startups alike are defining how successful companies operate in the 21st century. To learn about these trends and how to apply them to their own business, a group of a dozen Telstra executives came to SVIC for a custom, 3-day immersion program<\/a> focused on three key learning priorities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        1. How do large companies stay lean and innovate?<\/li>
                        2. How do traditional businesses utilize new technology to ready their workforce for the future?<\/li>
                        3. How do companies use AI\/BI to make more meaningful business decisions?<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                          We created Telstra a varied program targeting these priorities, and introduced them to the companies and experts addressing them in Silicon Valley today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/1KfBPeks76U\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                          How Large Companies Keep Innovating<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          Telstra wanted to know how large organizations can pursue new opportunities without ignoring their traditional businesses. To start their program, the executives saw how giant tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Cisco maintain corporate cultures that encourage innovation and experimentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          At Google<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra team met with an Innovation Evangelist on the company\u2019s approach to innovation, startup engagement practices, and talent retention. The executives found this meeting \u201coutstanding,\u201d as Google\u2019s ability to steer a massive tech company in new directions is exactly what Telstra hopes to achieve with its own business. As the executives learned, Google is not immune to the classic \u201cinnovator\u2019s dilemma\u201d<\/a> of deciding between improving existing products or investing in new ones. But by prioritizing a spirit of innovation and accepting that failures are inevitable (and instructional), Google keeps its top talent engaged and in constant pursuit of the company\u2019s next success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          The tech industry is so dynamic that the moment you stop taking risks is the moment you get left behind.<\/p>Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                          The Telstra executives also visited Cisco<\/strong><\/a>, another telecommunications giant leaning into the technologies of the future. For Cisco, corporate innovation is so critical that the company has ten dedicated \u201cInnovation Centers\u201d spread around the globe \u2014 each focused on a different industry like Health, Education, or Finance. Cisco uses these Innovation Centers to explore new transformative technologies like cloud computing and IoT, engage in rapid prototyping, and partner with startups, accelerators, and universities in bringing high-tech solutions to general markets. As the Telstra executives learned from Cisco\u2019s Corporate Strategic Innovation Group, the company\u2019s innovation strategy is simple: \u201cbuild, buy, partner, invest, and co-develop.\u201d This strategy has allowed Cisco to compete in the constantly-changing networking space, and given the Telstra executives a clear path forward for doing the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Key takeaway from Google and Cisco:<\/strong> in order to succeed in the intensely dynamic tech industry, large companies must prioritize innovation and be willing to take risks by investing in new technologies and partnerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Enabling the Workforces of the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          To revitalize its corporate culture, Telstra will need to bring its whole workforce on board \u2014 not an easy task for a company of thousands. The executives visited HPE, LinkedIn, and Slack to learn how the trend of workforce enablement is ensuring employees are connected to a company\u2019s goals, engaged in achieving them, and productive in so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                          \n\n\n\n

                          To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                          In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                          <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                          \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                          Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                          \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                          Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                          Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                          We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                          Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                          As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                          The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                          \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                          Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                          \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                          Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                          \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                          \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                          The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                          \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                          2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                          3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                            Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                            \n\n\n\n

                            Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                            \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                            Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                            The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                            Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

                          Search

                          Latest

                          \n

                          New technologies like digital workspaces and artificial\/business intelligence (AI\/BI) are changing the way we work. Legacy companies must adapt to these new ways of doing business \u2014 or be overtaken by a wave of technological disruption that shows no signs of slowing down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Telstra<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 the largest telecommunications company in Australia \u2014 is working to stay ahead. With a worldwide presence of 30,000 employees and 150 subsidiaries, the company has had to adapt its business model to new tech before: it began life in 1854 as an operator of telegraph lines. But the technological changes disrupting their market today pose an existential threat, not just to Telstra but to traditional businesses all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          Silicon Valley companies are doing business differently. By fostering innovative corporate cultures, arming their workforces with digital tools and organizational frameworks, and leveraging data to make better business decisions, tech giants and startups alike are defining how successful companies operate in the 21st century. To learn about these trends and how to apply them to their own business, a group of a dozen Telstra executives came to SVIC for a custom, 3-day immersion program<\/a> focused on three key learning priorities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          1. How do large companies stay lean and innovate?<\/li>
                          2. How do traditional businesses utilize new technology to ready their workforce for the future?<\/li>
                          3. How do companies use AI\/BI to make more meaningful business decisions?<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                            We created Telstra a varied program targeting these priorities, and introduced them to the companies and experts addressing them in Silicon Valley today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/1KfBPeks76U\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                            How Large Companies Keep Innovating<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            Telstra wanted to know how large organizations can pursue new opportunities without ignoring their traditional businesses. To start their program, the executives saw how giant tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Cisco maintain corporate cultures that encourage innovation and experimentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            At Google<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra team met with an Innovation Evangelist on the company\u2019s approach to innovation, startup engagement practices, and talent retention. The executives found this meeting \u201coutstanding,\u201d as Google\u2019s ability to steer a massive tech company in new directions is exactly what Telstra hopes to achieve with its own business. As the executives learned, Google is not immune to the classic \u201cinnovator\u2019s dilemma\u201d<\/a> of deciding between improving existing products or investing in new ones. But by prioritizing a spirit of innovation and accepting that failures are inevitable (and instructional), Google keeps its top talent engaged and in constant pursuit of the company\u2019s next success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            The tech industry is so dynamic that the moment you stop taking risks is the moment you get left behind.<\/p>Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                            The Telstra executives also visited Cisco<\/strong><\/a>, another telecommunications giant leaning into the technologies of the future. For Cisco, corporate innovation is so critical that the company has ten dedicated \u201cInnovation Centers\u201d spread around the globe \u2014 each focused on a different industry like Health, Education, or Finance. Cisco uses these Innovation Centers to explore new transformative technologies like cloud computing and IoT, engage in rapid prototyping, and partner with startups, accelerators, and universities in bringing high-tech solutions to general markets. As the Telstra executives learned from Cisco\u2019s Corporate Strategic Innovation Group, the company\u2019s innovation strategy is simple: \u201cbuild, buy, partner, invest, and co-develop.\u201d This strategy has allowed Cisco to compete in the constantly-changing networking space, and given the Telstra executives a clear path forward for doing the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Key takeaway from Google and Cisco:<\/strong> in order to succeed in the intensely dynamic tech industry, large companies must prioritize innovation and be willing to take risks by investing in new technologies and partnerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Enabling the Workforces of the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            To revitalize its corporate culture, Telstra will need to bring its whole workforce on board \u2014 not an easy task for a company of thousands. The executives visited HPE, LinkedIn, and Slack to learn how the trend of workforce enablement is ensuring employees are connected to a company\u2019s goals, engaged in achieving them, and productive in so doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            First up, another tech company with a long legacy: HP, founded in 1939. Specifically, the executives visited Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)<\/strong><\/a>, one half of HP\u2019s 2015 split into two distinct businesses. HPE provides Hybrid IT environments to enterprise customers \u2014 secure cloud infrastructures, IoT solutions, built-in data analysis, and more. The company\u2019s mission resonated with Telstra: \u201ctechnology innovation that fosters business transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            And this mission extends inward, where HPE is leading the way in embracing a mobile-first digital workforce. At the company\u2019s headquarters, the Telstra executives enjoyed multiple presentations on how the company is transitioning its workforce from a people and process standpoint. HPE isn\u2019t afraid to to rethink the role of desk-based sellers, retrain employees to use new technologies, and shift resources towards new channels like digital learning solutions. By actively improving the wireless workspaces it provides for its employees, HPE reduces infrastructure costs, increases business productivity, and empowers its workforce to work where and how they do so best \u2014 in technical terms, a win-win-win. As the Telstra executives saw, a willingness to embrace new ways of working internally is a powerful tool for adapting to external technological disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            HPE shares its approach to workforce enablement with the Telstra executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            At LinkedIn<\/strong><\/a>, the Telstra group learned about the organizational framework the company uses to foster employee-driven innovation. LinkedIn sets company-wide goals using a methodology called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). To wit: Objectives offer employees clarity, direction, and purpose; Key Results support them by being measurable, verifiable, and connected to a specific time frame. This method allows the company to meaningfully address the fundamental questions of every business: \u201cwhere do we want to go?\u201d and \u201chow will we know we\u2019re getting there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            From top to bottom, LinkedIn\u2019s objectives are aligned and measurable. More importantly, the entire workforce has a meaningful say in these objectives and a firm understanding of their role in achieving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            What sounds like a simple strategy has been cited<\/a> as a key factor in LinkedIn\u2019s stunning IPO and subsequent $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. The presentations the Telstra executives saw at LinkedIn convinced them that connecting employees to a company\u2019s mission can pay off big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Key takeaway from HPE and LinkedIn:<\/strong> to retain talent and meet operational goals, large companies should use tools that empower employees to engage with their work and objectives in a meaningful, personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Using Data to Make Better Business Decisions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            In Silicon Valley, the currency of the day is data. The Telstra executives were keen to learn how large companies are incorporating the collection and analysis of data into their operating models in order to take advantage of hidden insights, better engage employees, and intelligently manage sales outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                            \n\n\n\n

                            To get a taste of this, the Telstra group visited Salesforce<\/strong><\/a>: a market-leading Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) that provides a suite of cloud-based applications for administering sales, service, marketing, collaboration, and more. Salesforce\u2019s Director of Customer Evangelism preached the importance of software that organizes all of a company\u2019s data streams in a single place. These types of platforms allow not just for the easier storage and sharing of critical information, but for the possibility of intelligent understanding. CRM programs and their like can automatically make predictions about future sales, customers, and strategies based on complicated metrics both internal and external \u2014 and can automatically adapt themselves to a company\u2019s needs. What\u2019s more: the ease, portability, and extensibility of such software makes employees lives easier and enables them to work better, faster, and happier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                            In Salesforce Tower, the Telstra executives hear how cloud-based AI\/BI is changing the way companies engage with data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            As Salesforce emphasized: \u201cthe Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the way people work.\u201d The ability to intelligently analyze data is as much an effect as a cause of these changes. By taking advantage of existing analytics tools like Salesforce, large companies like Telstra can modernize their workflows and tap into intelligent insights that already exist \u2014 but are trapped by legacy systems that don\u2019t know how to reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Key takeaway from Salesforce:<\/strong> by using tools that better connect employees to data, large companies can understand \u2014 and act on \u2014 the information flowing throughout their entire organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            From Morse Code to Moore\u2019s Law: What\u2019s Next for Telstra<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            During their custom SVIC program, the Telstra executives had their key learning priorities addressed by some of Silicon Valley\u2019s most successful companies. From Google and Cisco, they learned that innovative partnerships and a willingness to take risks are the key to staying competitive. HPE and LinkedIn showed them how large companies can keep their global workforces enabled, engaged, and more productive by embracing digital workspaces and methodologies like OKRs. And at Salesforce, the group saw how new technologies can use a company\u2019s existing datasets to produce meaningful AI\/BI for future decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Telstra has been at the forefront of telecommunication technology for as long as the technology has existed  \u2014 literally. By embracing innovation culture, new ways of working, and the power of data, Telstra can lead Australia into the next century of telecom and beyond. As Telstra knows better than anyone: no matter how much the technology changes, there will always be a market for connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \"Digital<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                            <\/p>\n","post_title":"Telstra in Silicon Valley: How New Tech Means New Ways of Doing Business","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-22 18:21:37","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 01:21:37","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/telstra-in-silicon-valley-how-new-tech-means-new-ways-of-doing-business\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":610,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-06 06:17:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-06 14:17:00","post_content":"\n

                            \u201cWhy software is eating up the world\u201d is the visionary essay<\/a> written by tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in 2011 and published in the Wall Street Journal. In the essay, Andreessen says, \u201cMy own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.\u201d Today, a mere seven years later (2018), we are seeing the acceleration of this shift to a software-first economy where companies in virtually every industry are either reinventing themselves as software companies or are being disrupted by software-first startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Airline companies like Delta and American Airlines, advertising, and media companies like Facebook and Google, logistics companies like UPS and FedEx, car manufacturers like GM and Daimler-Benz are today almost indistinguishable from traditional software companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Through massive investments in software capabilities, these companies and others have reinvented themselves to become software companies, which is the main reason they are currently leading in their respective industries. Is your company ready for a software-first global economy? Can you imagine your company as a software company that happens to do what you are currently doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            These are questions we help companies answer through our Leading Digital Transformation Program<\/a>. The program, targeting senior company executives, seeks to create context and incite urgency to take up a digital transformation agenda. In our last Leading Digital Transformation program that took place in July 2018, senior executives from some of the top companies in the world went through the five-day program. During the program, they interacted with leading Silicon Valley companies like Amazon, Slack, and IBM and attended interactive talks with Silicon Valley digital transformation thought leaders<\/a>. In this article, we highlight three key areas they received insights on during the first day of the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Digital Transformation Through Cloud Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            For most corporate executives, the term cloud is synonymous with software-as-a-service and often denotes the deployment of services over either a private or public network. Cloud, today, is a far more expansive term than this. Consider that today Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 high-level services on its cloud infrastructure. On a granular level, this translates to over a thousand services and microservices deployable via the cloud. This rapid growth in availability of such cloud services, including the invention and advancement in containerization solutions like Docker and Kubernetes, has created a monumental opportunity for businesses to move services to the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Oracle is leading the charge in enterprise cloud computing. A senior director, Cloud Global Trade Management at Oracle was on hand to offer key insights into the disruptive opportunities these rapid advances in cloud computing offer companies today. Massive companies like Apple, Pixar, eBay, BMW, Netflix, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe Systems, AOL and others today use third-party cloud service providers like Oracle, AWS and Microsoft Azure to accelerate their digital competencies at a fraction of the price they would if they used their own infrastructure. This has helped them deliver services faster and more efficiently while spending less on server infrastructure. Companies targeting digital transformation must include cloud in their innovation agendas if they are to pivot into 21st century digital-first companies successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Business Model Innovation as a Tool for Digital Transformation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            In the day\u2019s second interactive session, Gregory LaBlanc, a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley explained how Wal-Mart, using software, eliminated the need for a back-room to store inventory at store level. Instead, software enables the company to make just-in-time inventory deliveries, triggered by point-of-sale software integrated with warehousing and logistics software. Similarly, UPS algorithmically calculates delivery routes, a task that would be infinitely difficult if left to the individuals doing the deliveries. These examples demonstrate how companies thought of as operating in conservative non-tech industries use software to build massive competitive advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            All successful companies today are tech companies, all other companies are dead companies, says LaBlanc. His argument for this tough statement aligns with Marc Andreessen\u2019s sentiments on software eating the world. LaBlanc believes that as industries become digitized, companies that do not reinvent themselves as software companies are nothing more than the walking dead. For organizations to avoid this zombie fate, they must understand the ongoing shift to everything-as-a-service. GE understood this and today sells aircraft engines-as-a-service, smart engines that generate terabytes of data, data that is more valuable to GE now than the very engines they build and sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Tesla, the electric car maker, is poised to win the race to build viable autonomous cars because of the millions of miles of autonomous car data its vehicles collect each day compared to those collected by competitors. LaBlanc ended his talk by asking attendants a poignant question, \u201cWhat would it mean for your company to become a software company, a services company, and a data company?\u201d This is a question every company, regardless of what industry they are in and whether they sell goods or services, will do well to focus on if they are to survive in today\u2019s rapidly digitizing market landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            The Secret Sauce and Main Principles of Amazon Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            Amazon has been called the most innovative and customer-centric company on the planet and for a good reason. The behemoth has not only disrupted the retail industry but is on course to disrupt multiple other industries including entertainment, home management, shipping, and logistics, among others. To wind up the day, executives attending the Leading Digital Transformation program visited Amazon to learn what makes the company so innovative. In 1996, Amazon opened its doors as an online seller, but Jeff Bezos, with a background in finance, understood that the future of commerce would be built on efficiency, not inventory. Having a massive book wholesaler in Seattle was one of the main reasons Bezos opted to start with books, as it gave Amazon the ability to maintain a massive digital inventory without having to maintain any physical inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Today, the tech company, as indeed it is, continues to follow this philosophy by entering markets that are ripe for disruption through more efficient processes underpinned by software capabilities. Whether cloud computing (AWS,) shipping and logistics (Prime and Now,) or retail (Marketplace), Amazon continues to aggressively seek ways to become more efficient and disruptive. Casualties of this innovation agility not only include competitors but Amazon\u2019s own products, such as is the case with the Kindle cannibalizing Amazon\u2019s physical book business, or the Amazon Echo, which sprouted from the epic failure that was the Fire Phone<\/a>. What companies can learn from Amazon is the impermanence of any competitive advantage and the need to build a customer-centric organization. As Bezos says, \u201cOur customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Day 1 Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            Besides the three experiences outlined above, program attendants also got the opportunity to test drive Tesla vehicles and experience the future of transport or transport-as-a-service. Through the day\u2019s experiences, attendants were challenged to rethink their organizations\u2019 innovation agendas considering what they had learned. They came away with a fresh perspective and deeper insights into how software is indeed eating the world, and the urgent need for companies across all industries to embrace digital transformation. In day two of the program, attendants learned about the next generation of digital technologies like blockchain, AI, and IoT and how these technologies are fueling the rapid realization of the 4th industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Leading Digital Transformation: Day 1 - Digital Revolution is Here and Now","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/leading-digital-transformation-day-1-digital-revolution-is-here-and-now\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":619,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-02 09:21:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 16:21:00","post_content":"\n

                            Rapid advances in digital technologies and the resulting disruptive innovations sweeping multiple industries has made innovation at a corporate level an imperative. This (non-exhaustive) list<\/a> from Investopedia identifies 20 industries that are about to or already undergoing massive disruption fueled by digital technologies. While corporations are responding to this twin threat and opportunity by applying digital transformation methods and other initiatives, there is one weakness these strategies have that can thwart the overall impact of such internal efforts on the corporation\u2019s defensibility and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            This weakness has to do with commercialization of innovation. While most corporations are rushing to incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies into their existing products or create new products altogether, they must be cognizant of the fact that the market will ultimately determine the viability of such innovations. To put it differently, customers will not buy technology, but solutions. This is a strong recommendation Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard, co-founders of GrowthX<\/a>, put forward when we spoke with them about commercializing corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Find Your Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cIt starts with the truth,\u201d says Sean. When corporations embark on an innovation agenda, they must start by first determining the truth of the effort they are undertaking. If new product development is underway, the truth could mean determining whether there is product\/market fit, or put differently, whether a market exists for that product, or if a pivot to something different is necessary, or whether to shelve the product altogether. The challenge corporations face is they lack a framework by which to discover this truth. Such a framework is necessary to provide a roadmap that is replicable across all innovations the corporation chooses to undertake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Undertaking such a framework requires either an internal entrepreneur or an entrepreneur-in-residence, which could be one or a handful of people tasked with rapidly iterating on feedback emanating from the market on a given innovation. This iteration must be done in small non-scalable ways in order to arrive faster at the truth about that innovation. \u201cCan you determine whether or not there is a business model and a way to monetize that innovation? And what does that look like? How big is that opportunity beyond your early customers?\u201d are some of the questions Sean urges corporations to ask about their innovations. The answers to these questions will often point to the truth about the innovation. But in order to embrace this culture of seeking out the truth, organizations must first create and implement functional learning organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Establish Functional Learning Organization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cYou have to believe that learning leads to revenue and if you do believe that and the organization is behind it, you\u2019re going to find your truth,\u201d counsels Sean. Andrew provides more perspective to this by adding that corporate culture is often a barrier to finding this truth. As entrenched corporate culture and mindsets are difficult to replace, the duo point to a more measured and effective means of achieving incremental change. They call it establishing a functional learning organization. \u201cDo it in very small bits. Try to create functional learning out of small groups and teams,\u201d explains Sean, \u201cto establish measured learning and entrench data-driven decision making.\u201d The importance of starting with measured learning is that it creates momentum that leads to the next step, and then the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            For this strategy to work, says Sean, \u201cyou actually need to be out interfacing with those customers and those early customers, which you shouldn\u2019t be selling to, you should be recruiting for joint development.\u201d This points to a crucial factor corporations must address throughout their innovation cycles; listening and learning from the market is tied to revenue. As the small units within the organization undergo functional learning and increasingly find the truth about the products they are responsible for, there emerges a direct correlation with the organization\u2019s revenue. Sean sums it up this way, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that mindset and people don\u2019t buy into the fact that learning leads to revenue, then more often than not (your innovation agenda) is going to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Seek Profitability Opportunities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cWhere we find the biggest gap to be addressed that\u2019s holding most big companies back from the big bets they\u2019re looking to make is the commercialization,\u201d advances Andrew. He goes on to explain that most innovation that goes on in corporations has to do with improving the status quo, not making disruptive big bets. While conversations around innovation may be ongoing within corporations, what is often missing is the how, he says. Sean provides an answer to this dilemma, \u201cWe\u2019ve moved out of this age of developed technology into this age of applied technology where it\u2019s never been easier to get a product to market yet it\u2019s never been harder to sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            This creates a scenario where corporations must put more emphasis on<\/strong> market development earlier in the technology and research and product development phases to figure out what they should be spending their time and money and resources on by actually solving problems for customers and end-users instead of just building cool tech.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Such a market-first, product-second mindset is what corporations need to foster within their teams in order to discover commercialization and profitability opportunities within their innovation agendas before spending substantial resources upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Sustaining Corporate Innovation Commercialization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cIt\u2019s not about finding a market; it\u2019s about finding the truth,\u201d emphasizes Andrew. While it is advisable for corporations to partner with startups from Silicon Valley to build next-generation products, finding the truth means knowing when an innovation will be profitable and when it may not be. The imperative, therefore, becomes to seek out the truth behind your innovations before undertaking a full-scale roll-out. Sean concludes by saying that to sustain corporate innovation commercialization, the current innovation economy will force product companies to transform into services companies that focus more on listening to the market through data, than on building new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Goldner and Sean Sheppard<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                            \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/k4tmo6aVtzw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Corporate Innovation into Commercial Success","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-corporate-innovation-into-commercial-success\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":621,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-11-01 17:16:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-11-02 00:16:00","post_content":"\n

                            Insurer BMI Ecuador has been in operation for more than two decades. The company knows its core business in health and life insurance well and has been successful in those industries since its founding in 1997. But now, in the face of a rapidly digitizing insurance sector, BMI risks losing ground to new entrants and agile competitors who are taking advantage of emerging technologies to offer superior products and services to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            To better understand the risks it faces and learn how to overcome them, BMI turned to Silicon Valley Innovation Center. We built a customized two-day executive immersion program for BMI which focused on two areas: corporate innovation and the digital transformation of the insurance industry. In this article we cover key trends BMI were introduced to in each of these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/p_Q4GqQ5kto\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                            Corporate Innovation and Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            Before an organization can embrace new technologies and be a truly digital business it must first create a compatible corporate culture. What does this culture look like? There is no definitive answer to that question but there are certain traits which are today held up as being essential to a corporation\u2019s culture if that corporation is to not just survive but prosper. Namely:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Corporations must be agile, customer-centric learning organizations which encourage innovation and make data-driven decisions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

                            We took BMI\u2019s executives to a Q&A session with Google so they could see how the tech giant seeks to realize these ideas in practice. The BMI team learned about Google\u2019s policy of 20-percent-time, whereby employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative and creative side projects that could benefit Google. Google AdSense, Gmail, and Google News - all now significant parts of its core business - were first conceived as 20-percent-time side projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            But Google is just one example of a company with an innovative corporate culture. There are many more in Silicon Valley, including Airbnb. At Airbnb, BMI\u2019s executives heard how the sharing economy platform prides itself on what it refers to as its coaching culture. In practice this philosophy means Airbnb provides employees with regular feedback and strives to create an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-development. Airbnb credits this culture with helping the company adapt to a changing regulatory environment and diversify into new product lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Key takeaway from Google and Airbnb:<\/strong> corporate innovation can be achieved in many ways. No two organizations are alike, so no two corporate cultures should be alike either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \"Executives<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                            Executives from insurer BMI Ecuador learn about Google's innovative corporate culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Digitization of Insurance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            Establishing an innovation-ready corporate culture like that of Google or Airbnb is the first step toward organizational transformation. The next part of the journey is about engaging with the startups and technologies actively disrupting the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            In the case of the insurance industry, disruption is being led by insurtechs. These companies are drawing upon data and emerging technologies to redefine how insurance is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            One of the most prominent new business models in insurance is platformification, the creation of online ecosystems where producers and consumers can interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            In insurance platformification Sureify is a leading player. At a meeting with the startup, the BMI executive team learned how the Sureify platform equips insurance carriers with digital customer engagement tools. These tools allow insurers to provide their customers with the kind of smooth user experience we have come to associate with leading digital services like Uber and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cLife insurers and insurers in general really struggle to engage,\u201d says Dustin Yoder, Sureify CEO. \u201cAbout 97% of life insurance today is not sold online. Ultimately, insurance companies struggle to get to market digitally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            The Sureify platform also collects a wealth of data on policyholders, including their life events, habits and health status. This data enables insurers to maximise revenue by personalizing the products they offer customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Sureify isn\u2019t the only platform shaking up the insurance industry. During a startup showcase on the second day of their immersion program, we introduced the BMI delegation to biotechnology firm NeuroSky. NeuroSky\u2019s biosensor technologies make it possible to collect more biometric data than ever before. For insurers, integrating this data into existing systems provides more information about customers; who they are, what they need and when they need it. For insurance consumers, more access to personal biometric data can lead to better-informed lifestyle decisions, better health outcomes and, with any luck, more affordable insurance premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Key takeaway from Sureify and NeuroSky:<\/strong> data is now a company's most valuable asset. The more a company can engage with its customers the more data it can collect. The more data it can collect, the more it can engage with its customers through personalized services which delight consumers and drive greater revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \"As<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                            As part of their two-day immersion program the BMI Ecuador team learned about disruptive trends emerging today in the insurance industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            In life as in business, circumstances change. While insurance companies might be able to offer their customers insurances against unplanned events, they cannot protect themselves against all possible scenarios in their industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            But for BMI, what is within the company\u2019s power is to avoid being disrupted by insurtech startups which offer digital products to today\u2019s digital consumers. The insurer left Silicon Valley with a clear blueprint on how achieve that result. The first step on that blueprint is to develop a corporate culture robust enough to thrive in a constantly-changing landscape. Step two is to look outward, at consumers, at startups and at technology, and be willing to learn about how old problems can be solved in new ways and how new problems nobody has thought of yet can be solved in ways which have yet to be invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Yet although some trends cannot be predicted, what become obvious to BMI Ecuador\u2019s executives during the course of their program is that insurtech is a threat and it is here to stay. But what the BMI team also saw is that there is a range of options at their disposal to grow in a way which turns fintech from a threat into an opportunity. Those options include partnering with startups, developing digital solutions in-house and ramping up corporate venture capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Whatever path BMI choose, what is now clear to its top leaders is that there is a need for action. In today\u2019s disruption-centric economy, where doing nothing is the choice that carries the highest cost, it is that step to action which is the most important step of all.<\/strong><\/p>\n","post_title":"What BMI Ecuador Learned in their Silicon Valley Immersion Program: The Future of Insurance","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/what-bmi-ecuador-learned-in-their-silicon-valley-immersion-program-the-future-of-insurance\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":624,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-26 19:29:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-27 02:29:00","post_content":"\n

                            The path to innovation is often identified as one that relies heavily on technical skills. Motifs of scientists or software coders conjure an image of technically-astute individuals working magic in idealized settings. Innovation, it turns out, is a more nuanced journey and experience from this. The reality is that innovation does not happen in a technically idealized setting. Instead, it is human-centric and often involves tangential soft skills that are as important, if not more so, than technical skills. Understanding the relationship between soft and hard skills can help derive successful outcomes from an innovation agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Organizations wishing to create a culture of innovation must focus their efforts on blending these two paradigms, something Balvinder Singh Powar, Board Member and Director of Booster Space Industries<\/a> is well versed in. Having worked with some of the largest organizations in Europe to actualize this blend, Balvinder understands that to gain leadership through innovation, organizations must first start by instilling the right attitude for success within their teams. We recently caught up with Balvinder to discuss how organizations can achieve innovation success through soft skill optimization and what this approach means for their innovation agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Diversity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            Diversity is currently a hot topic in the tech community and often comes with connotations of nationality, gender, and race. However, Balvinder believes diversity does include these things but also more granular forms of diversity. \u201cDiversity is not just nationality, it\u2019s also working style,\u201d he says. As innovation is often a result of individuals working on a team together, Balvinder sees the various soft skills each person has as contributing to the diversity of the group. He points out that while diverse groups will outperform uniform groups, they can also underperform if poorly managed. From his experience training teams, he sees effective management as one that helps individuals on the team understand each other for better collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Diversity can also refer to the difference between older and younger generation workers in an organization. Balvinder offers an illustration of a 50-something CFO at a traditional bank, who, representing an older generation of more traditional workers, must work, at the same level, with a C-suite cybersecurity executive who may be in his\/her thirties. Having to manage at the same level on the organogram, synergizing these two individuals can lead to incredible results. \u201cWe talk about many layers of diversity. If we can understand them and put them together in the right way, then magic happens, but the first thing we must be is aware,\u201d says Balvinder. This awareness has to do with learning how to blend high-tech with high-touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Blending High-tech with High-touch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            With the advent of AI and other high-tech technologies, interactions across both local and dispersed teams are increasingly becoming digitized, resulting in fewer face-to-face interactions among team members. \u201cWe are getting into a world that is high-tech and high-touch,\u201d says Balvinder. Today teams are faced with increasingly high-tech interactions while at the same time, a rising need to maintain direct communications in order to accelerate collaboration and innovation. This dilemma is accentuated by the influx of millennials into the workforce, a demographic that lives in a very mixed, hybrid world. This influx may at times clash with an older generation in senior management that is used to more direct communication that does not depend on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Balvinder believes this challenge can be overcome by organizations becoming more intentional about bringing teams together in physical spaces. He recommends that teams have face-to-face time together as this promotes better understanding, connections, and empathy among team members, important ingredients for an innovation culture to thrive. \u201cIf you want to create innovation, the quality of how you interact with others does become important,\u201d he says.  This is exemplified, he argues, in the fact that a five-minute face-to-face meeting can accomplish more than a back and forth of 20 emails, a fact that science supports by showing that non-verbal communication (body language) accounts for 80% of human-to-human communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Human-led Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            While most organizations employ a technology-led innovation process, Balvinder sees human-led innovation as the path to lasting and disruptive innovation. He explains that human-led innovation is an approach that attempts to instill two competencies in teams. The first is business innovation, where team members are encouraged and taught how to develop the mind of an entrepreneur. The second competency has to do with behavioral fitness which touches on knowing yourself, how to lead others, emotional intelligence, things like influence and persuasion, how to deal with conflict. He stresses that these competencies can only be refined in a group environment where individual members receive multilateral feedback on their progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Another area Balvinder believes has the potential to stimulate human-led innovation is incentives. By creating incentives that reward behaviors that support innovation, organizations can create a snowball effect that helps advance their innovation agenda at a faster rate. To achieve this, organizations must help their teams understand that they are part of a bigger picture. For instance, by helping employees understand why the organization must innovate (threats from new tech, new competitors, startups), it would be easier to foster a culture of innovation than if only top management understood the big picture. For instance, a traditional bank would need to make its employees aware of threats from digital-first banks like Revolut<\/a> and N26<\/a> to provide context to employees on why they need to embrace an innovation culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Building an Experiential Innovation Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            Massive companies like Apple and Amazon have built profitable businesses on triggering emotions through experiences. Balvinder sees this as a pointer to how organizations should approach innovation. \u201cNot everything is application; it\u2019s also about the experience,\u201d he says. By creating memorable experiences, both for employees and customers, organizations can help trigger an emotional response, a key component of the human decision-making process. By doing so, organizations can create innovation cultures that do not hinge on cleverly written memos but instead emanate from the hearts of employees, a crucial factor in the race to becoming successful in a digital-first human-centric marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            VIDEO: Interview with Balvinder Singh Powar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                            \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/grnxaqmNJFw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Cultivating Soft Skills to Foster a Culture of Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/cultivating-soft-skills-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":630,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-15 14:22:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-15 21:22:00","post_content":"\n

                            Orthodoxies, or otherwise known as conventional wisdom, refer to how things have always been done. In corporate talk, orthodoxies are often called best practice. While there are positive orthodoxies like human safety and regulations, there are those that limit an organization and indeed, individuals, from thinking \u201coutside the box.\u201d This conventional wisdom, over time, becomes integrated into corporate cultures and playbooks, creating barriers to new and innovative business models, processes and other transformative actions that could lead to greater growth, sustainability, defensibility, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte are the coauthors of \u201cDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive<\/a>,\u201d a book that seeks to expose defunct ways of thinking within organizations and help them innovate their way to the next level. In the book, the authors discuss how organizations develop poor corporate habits, which end up masquerading as best practices. They also offer alternative views on how organizations can embrace new ways of thinking and doing to win in the marketplace. Geoff and Steve recently joined us for a chat about their book and how they see the market evolving as digital transformation takes root across industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Exponential Growth vs. Linear Growth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            In previous industrial revolutions, growth was mostly linear, explains Geoff. Companies at that time had the opportunity to observe and assess technological advances and then integrate them once they matured. They did this without losing their competitive edge and without having to take any major risks. Today, the rate of change is no longer liner \u2013 it is exponential. While at the start of the information age, Moore\u2019s Law dictated the rate of change, today, as Steve says, \u201cthe impact really has to do with not just the technology itself, but it\u2019s all the technology upon the computing power which, in turn, changes how people behave and what\u2019s possible.\u201d The result of this \u201ctechnology stack\u201d is the combinations of those technologies accelerate the disruption to business models and the pace at which this disruption is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Organizations with playbooks and cultures optimized for linear growth will find themselves playing catch-up in the market if they do not adjust. Realizing that this exponential change is only starting to accelerate, organizations must embrace new orthodoxies and ways of thinking that allow them to experiment with new technologies and new approaches. One way to do this is by undertaking what Steve and Geoff call Minimum Viable Moves (MVMs). These are actions taken by an organization to test new ways of doing things without impacting the overall business. Borrowing from the phrase Minimum Viable Product popular in startup circles, focusing an organization on undertaking inexpensive and non-risky MVMs can help introduce new capabilities to an organization quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Customer Behavior vs. Internal Forecasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            Most established organizations use financial projections to inform the strategic direction of the organization, or as Geoff puts it, they staple strategic planning processes to an annual financial forecast. This thinking creates a gap between what the business is doing and what customers expect. When this gap remains unaddressed, disruption occurs. \u201cThat\u2019s the essence of disruption: it\u2019s something that makes the consumer\u2019s life, or a technology that makes it possible for a consumer\u2019s life, to be meaningfully different,\u201d says Steve, \u201cand businesses that don\u2019t adapt to those new possibilities will eventually just become irrelevant to the consumers.\u201d Steve and Geoff call human behavior the subatomic layer of any business. They assert that every business outcome is because of human behavior. \u201cYou cannot change your performance review, you cannot grow, you cannot improve your margin unless someone somewhere changes their behavior,\u201d says Geoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            But businesses cannot always respond to change in the same way that consumers do. While a consumer can risk a few dollars to try out a new service or product, large organizations are constrained by risk management measures. They cannot afford to take bold risks at the expense of the business. Steve and Geoff advise such businesses to embrace a culture of Minimum Viable Moves. This could be through the formation of an innovation lab or a corporate venture capital arm tasked with investing in startups. Steve adds that businesses must intuit what will be delightful to the customers that they are trying to serve and take every measure to deliver delightful experiences to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Beginner Mind vs. Expert Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            Geoff explains this dichotomy by quoting Suzuki\u2019s book Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind; \u201cIn a beginner\u2019s mind, there are many options. In an expert\u2019s mind, there are a few.\u201d This statement implies that most businesses develop an \u201cexpert\u201d way of looking at situations blocking out alternative, and in some cases, better ideas. To avoid this trap, organizations must approach each situation with an open mind, remaining willing to explore new ideas that may at times fly in the face of conventional wisdom. To illustrate this point, Steve and Geoff narrate how Deloitte US blew up conventional wisdom when determining whether to invest in a \u201cclick university\u201d or \u201cbrick university.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Deloitte US wanted to set up a university where they could train their people. Faced with a recession, the firm could have gone with conventional wisdom to leverage technology in a way where they could take cost out of their system. Instead, they decided to challenge this orthodoxy and build a brick university. \u201cIt\u2019s even more important in this world of technology and people not being face-to-face and being virtual to invest in something that can bring our firm together in a cultural way,\u201d explains Steve. This is an excellent example of how challenging conventional wisdom can result in an extraordinary outcome. While in this case, Deloitte US went in the opposite direction of digital transformation, they did so out of a clear understanding of what their company needed and ended up delivering a solution that brought the entire Deloitte fraternity together to learn and become collegial in an amazing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Anticipating Exponential Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cBring a beginner\u2019s mind. Don\u2019t presume that what\u2019s happened in the past and the way things have been done in the past is the right way of doing things because if you try to bring past expertise to the table in a world of exponential change, you\u2019re probably going to get it wrong,\u201d cautions Geoff. However, he is quick to add that while organizations must challenge conventional wisdom, this does not mean throwing out everything. Instead, they must preserve the effective and profitable parts of their business while maintaining a portfolio of ongoing activities that attempt new things. Businesses that become adept at discovering new things, innovating quickly and working them into their core business, are the ones that will win in the 4th industrial age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            VIDEO: Interview With Geoff Tuff and Steve Goldbach<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                            \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/7Agh9N6CY7Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"Transform Your Company by Detonating Outdated Ways of Thinking","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/transform-your-company-by-detonating-outdated-ways-of-thinking\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":639,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-10-01 16:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-10-01 23:12:00","post_content":"\n

                            Historically, corporate innovation is not a novel occurrence. What is different now is the push for corporate innovation in the face of rapid disruption brought about by advances in digital technologies. Corporations that have long established themselves as leaders in their respective industries are having to rethink their entire businesses to adapt to the fourth industrial age. As digital technologies go mainstream, the need to pivot is not only a profit-driven requirement but an existential one that companies must adopt to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Digital transformation is at the heart of established corporations that are reshaping themselves as \u201cstartup corporations.\u201d Companies like GM, Caterpillar, and Walmart, while traditionally non-tech companies have embraced digital transformation and today utilize digital capabilities similar to those found at companies like Google and Microsoft to continue leading in their respective industries. compete with tech-first companies like Google and Microsoft regarding digital technology capabilities. However, the path to digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies; it is about reshaping the entirety of the company to become a digital-first enterprise. As such, digital transformation is not the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself that leads to growth and innovation. In this article, we explore three key areas leaders, and senior executives need to focus on to infuse digital transformation in their organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Strategic View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            In an interview with SVIC, Gregory LaBlanc, Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley pointed out that corporate innovation starts with top management asking strategic questions about the organization. These questions include: \u201cHow can we forge ahead as a tech company? What would it mean to be a digital-first company operating in our industry? What would it mean for decision-making if we embraced big data and predictive analytics?\u201d These questions and others enable the corporation to explore the core aspects of digital transformation \u2013 ecosystems, platforms, and digital business models. This approach also helps focus leadership and management on how to retrofit the organization as a tech company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Another strategic area that business leaders must consider is return on investment. The challenge here is that most leaders view digital transformation and resultant innovation through a Wall Street lens of quarterly earnings and shareholder value. However, this approach flies in the face of how Silicon Valley investors approach innovation, which is through a valuation approach. For example, Tesla may not have a strong balance sheet but this has not prevented the company\u2019s valuation from skyrocketing. So, businesses must be ready for this tension between balance sheet investing and valuation investing when it comes to investing in innovation. By looking for a return on innovation tied to the overall impact of the innovation on the organization and not just the balance sheet, organizations can foster strong corporate innovation that enjoys management support, and that helps the company transform gradually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Organizational View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            The organizational view is approaching digital transformation as an organizational challenge and not a technology challenge. When viewing digital transformation as a technology issue, management ends up missing a crucial aspect of innovation: corporate culture. \u201cYou may have the brightest and most progressive people, but they will flounder in a culture that stifles innovation,\u201d says Duncan Tait<\/a>, CEO, SEVP, and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu. Culture, a byproduct of organizational structures and systems, plays a key role in corporate innovation. For leadership to engender innovation, they must be willing to implement structures that favor collaboration in the context of disruptive innovation and organizational creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            However, changing corporate culture is not easy. Therefore, organizations must experiment with alternative organizational structures that impact the organizations most innovative employees\/ units. For instance, Wendy\u2019s, the restaurant chain giant, started 90 Degrees Labs<\/a>, a corporate innovation hub that reports directly to senior management. The lab frequently bypasses other organizational units to collect data directly from employees, customers, and other stakeholders as well as to release innovative experiments to be tested both internally and \u201cin the wild.\u201d By creating a shadow organization within the main organization, Wendy\u2019s can experiment with digital transformation even as the rest of the organization takes time to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Innovation View<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            The journey to corporate innovation is often one that blends both a response to external disruptive pressures as well as a need to digitally transform the organization to drive internal innovation. Going back to Wendy\u2019s, the establishment of the innovation lab was in response to disruption happening across the restaurant industry. The focus of the lab, however, is to infuse digital transformation into the organization, something Wendy\u2019s hopes will result in disruptive innovations of its own. As such, an innovation view should focus on getting the right structures in place that result in disruptive innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Building on the strategic and organizational views, business leaders will need to focus their efforts on streamlining processes, resources, and capital to foster innovation. For instance, utilizing tools used in startups like agile methodologies and business model innovation can help the corporation better nurture emerging in-house innovations to create future growth either internally or as new business opportunities. Also, focusing on a return on innovation will help the organization avoid the deadly return on investment trap, which tends to nip innovation in the bud by pressuring teams to generate quick revenue returns, something true innovation often does not do very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            Rapid disruption is upon most industries. Organizations of all sizes find themselves at a crossroads with a sign that says, \u201cInnovate or Die.\u201d The path to innovation, however, still poses a major challenge to organizations. Nevertheless, by approaching digital transformation through the three views highlighted above, organizations can avoid disruption and instead become the ones disrupting both their businesses and those of competitors. The bottom line remains that digital technologies are reshaping the market landscape. Where businesses end up amid this reshuffle depends on how swiftly and effectively they can digitally transform their businesses to better align with the emergent fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Digital Transformation: The Key to Rapid Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/digital-transformation-the-key-to-rapid-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":646,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-09-19 14:41:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-09-19 21:41:00","post_content":"\n

                            \u201cThere are tech companies, and then there are dead companies.\u201d This statement is the hard-hitting truth Gregory LaBlanc has for companies mulling over whether to implement a digital transformation strategy or not. Gregory is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkley. We recently caught up with him to ask him what companies can do to survive the fourth industrial age. \u201cIf you think about it,\u201d Gregory says, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a tech sector on the stock market anymore. While the media and Wall Street like to call the likes of Google and Apple tech companies and others like GM and Monsanto non-tech companies, the reality is these are all tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Gregory is right. A company like GM, while categorized as an automaker, has more software developers than Google. United Airlines and UPS utilize more technology than most tech-first companies. According to Gregory, the notion of what a tech company represents is fast disappearing. What is emerging are tech companies that do other things. For instance, Google is a tech company that does advertising; UPS is a tech company that delivers packages; Amazon is a tech company that sells merchandise; GM is a tech company that sells cars, and so on. This distinction is important, Gregory asserts, for businesses that want to survive in a digital era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Management Optimization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            While most businesses think digital transformation is all about technology, Gregory disagrees. \u201cDigital transformation is a management problem, not a tech problem,\u201d Gregory says. Looking back at the history of technological revolutions, the companies that were able to respond from a management and operational perspective to integrate the technology of the day were the ones that won. This demarcation is essential for business leaders concerned with what technologies are emerging and how best to take advantage of them. Gregory advises that the first step to digital transformation is to optimize management and organizational structures to better assimilate and utilize new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Building on this perspective, Gregory points out that organizations do not need any new conceptual skills or models to thrive in the digital era. Instead, they must adopt tried and tested management strategies centered around a learning organization. These are organizations that learn and adapt in response to new information. Management structures must, therefore, be optimized to support the requirements of a learning organization. In Gregory\u2019s words, leaders must become \u201chuman APIs,\u201d able to assimilate technical information and apply domain expertise to glean actionable insights on how to move the organization forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Resource Utilization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cAll industrial revolutions have been driven by increases in resource utilization,\u201d says Gregory. What has changed with this new industrial revolution is that the availability of data has made it possible to increase resource utilization to levels previous revolutions did not manage to achieve. Consider the sharing economy. While most commentators may point to the consumer habits of millennials as the driving force of the sharing economy, this is not the complete picture. What we see with millennial behavior is a symptom of the structural changes occurring across industries and not the cause. Through improved real-time data-driven resource allocation, the need to own things is fast becoming obsolete, a factor that is propelling the sharing economy. For businesses to take advantage of this new trend, they must move away from being product companies to being service companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Gregory explains, \u201cThe product business model is on its way out, and this is being driven by ever-increasing capacity utilization.\u201d For instance, the current utilization of motor vehicles in the US stands at around 5%.<\/a> Digital transformation, through ridesharing and other similar technologies, has the potential to drive this number up by reducing the number of hours vehicles remain idle through the day. This shift will not be reflected in Gross National Product (GNP) numbers but in the increased satisfaction consumers have. This trend will simultaneously increase customer satisfaction while cutting the number of car units sold, number of parking lots needed and so on. This level of resource utilization will not only reshape the automotive industry but create new industries like autonomous car manufacturing and supporting technologies like charging stations and idle car park retrofitting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Data-Driven Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cThe company with the most data wins.\u201d That\u2019s Gregory\u2019s summation of how important data is to the modern organization. He continues by pointing out that it\u2019s not data about specific customers that matters, but data about an aggregate marketplace. Take Facebook for instance. The amount of marketplace-specific data they have makes them untouchable in their space. The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of AgTech giant Monsanto, has an app called Climate FieldView<\/a> that has mapped out close to 70% of all arable land in the United States through IoT enabled farm machinery. These sets of data act as an insurmountable moat against competitor threats. So, how can companies utilize data to win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cWhile large companies can afford to perform data-driven discovery where they manipulate mountains of data to try and find trends, this is the wrong approach for smaller companies,\u201d Gregory intimates. Instead, he says, they should start by asking how more data can help them find answers for existing and hypothetical questions. Put another way, how can data better offset the limitations of ignorance that every company faces? To get this approach right, companies must invest in balancing out their teams to better interpret this data. If the organization is too technical then business cases will be missed; if the team is too business heavy, then technical opportunities derived from data interpretation will be missed. The right mix will ensure a company has a truly functional team in place to take advantage of data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cHow can businesses start the process of reinventing themselves for the digital era?\u201d we asked Gregory. \u201cIt all starts with how you think of your business,\u201d he says. If you are a product business, what would it mean to become a service business? If you consider yourself a non-tech company, what would it mean to become a tech company? If you make hardware, what would it mean to be a software-first company? What would it mean to be a fundamentally data-first company where information and data are at the heart of your competitive advantage? Asking these questions will help reorient a company\u2019s thinking about what their business model is. Gregory concludes, \u201cThis is the first step to reinventing your business for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            VIDEO: Full Interview With Gregory LaBlanc<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
                            \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/f_wTYle0E5M\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","post_title":"How to Reinvent Your Business for the Digital Age","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-reinvent-your-business-for-the-digital-age\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":660,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-08-15 19:11:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-08-16 02:11:00","post_content":"\n

                            The traditional corporate environment is hardly fertile ground for innovation. With entrenched thinking, rigid management structures, and an established way of doing things, it is often difficult to convince employees to embrace innovation. In some cases, where the competition is usurping a company\u2019s market share, innovation is usually more of an act of survival than a preemptive strike. However, companies that have a strong market position may end up resting on their laurels, exposing them to rapid disruption from forward-thinking competitors or startups. To avoid being disrupted, traditional corporations must embrace corporate innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, a company that has been around for over a century and that is deeply entrenched in the safety testing niche. \u201cThe safety industry has evolved from people being worried about getting electrocuted by their kettle to people worrying about cyber threats,\u201d he says, \u201cand so having been stuck in its ways for all those years, UL has had to redefine what safety means and what it means to assess safety.\u201d This reassessment and realignment led the firm to start UL Ventures, which invests in startups involved in the safety assessment and testing field. From his experience heading up this unit, Mathieu shares what he believes are key elements corporations must adopt to foster corporate innovation within their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Stay Committed to Your Mission Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cWhenever we go looking for startups or other businesses to invest in, we first ensure the companies we approach align with our core mission statement,\u201d Mathieu says. This is a key insight for corporations that may get distracted by all the incredible technologies developing across different industries. While it is essential to explore developments in lateral industries, it is important to remain a mission-driven organization to sustain current momentum and keep current customers satisfied. In the case of UL, focusing on investing in startups that augment or complement its current mission statement ensures the firm\u2019s competitive advantage remains intact and continues to strengthen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cIf you are building the next Instagram or dog walking app, we are not interested,\u201d says Mathieu. By having this laser-like focus, the firm has been able to go through seventy acquisitions without losing sight of its core mission. For executives considering innovation, it is essential first to define a clear mission statement and then use this as a guiding principle when acquiring or partnering with startups. Doing this will save the firm both money and time while ensuring maximization of opportunity cost through avoidance of timewasting ventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            Start a Corporate Venture Capital Fund<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                            \u201cWhy did UL start a venture capital arm?\u201d we asked Mathieu. \u201cOver time, UL simply could not keep up with all the advances in the technologies it inspects and certifies. Starting a VC arm was the natural progression to the direction we were taking to become a more innovative company,\u201d he explains. But, according to Mathieu, VC is not as simple as just putting together some money and throwing it at startups. The process of investing in and onboarding startups is often fraught with challenges such as culture clashes, poor returns and outright lack of fit as the startup evolves. He notes that while financial returns are important, they should not form the main agenda when investing in startups for innovation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            For the UL fund, he looks for three things in a startup before considering an investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            1. An outright connection or correlation to UL\u2019s core business, which could mean the startup resonates with the company either internally (the organization\u2019s core operations) or externally (to customers.)<\/li>
                            2. An ability to impact UL\u2019s business over a 3-5-year period either regarding internal productivity, access to new markets or acting as a go-to-market vehicle for a new line of products or services.<\/li>
                            3. Pedigree of the team and project.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                              Besides focusing on this set of criteria, Mathieu also advises corporations to have a dedicated innovation team that stewards the entire corporate venture capital process. With such a team in place, it is easier to handle issues like culture clashes, startup onboarding, commercial agreements, IP protection, among other issues that are bound to arise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                              Create a Culture of Curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                              \u201cThe first step of innovation is ideation, and for ideation to happen, there must be curiosity,\u201d says Mathieu. Most corporations falter at this step because established cultures and norms do not allow for the presentation of ideas, most of which will inevitably fail. As failure is often frowned upon in traditional corporate settings, employees tend to keep their ideas to themselves lest they are labeled a failure, which can affect their performance rating or promotion prospects. \u201cA culture of innovation must start at the top. Management needs to say it is okay to fail, as long as we fail fast and we are failing in the quest for innovation,\u201d says Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                              \u201cThis is, however, just half of the solution,\u201d he adds. For organizations to fully embrace an innovation culture, there must be mechanisms and processes in place to manage this inflow of ideas. Some companies use idea boxes while others utilize hackathons, or the 80\/20 rule made famous by Google. All these represent mechanisms by which ideas are solicited from employees, presented to management, filtered and supported or killed off quickly to keep the innovation momentum going. By adopting a fail-fast failure-tolerant innovation culture, organization leaders can inspire employees to think beyond their scope of work to help the company break into new levels of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                              Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                              \u201cCorporate innovation takes time,\u201d Mathieu reflects. While in a startup the entire company is a sandbox where experiments can be run hot and fast, the situation is different for traditional corporate organizations. \u201cInstead of focusing on why innovation cannot work in your organization, focus instead on how you can create a sandbox environment to test your boldest ideas within a controlled environment. Creating such a sandbox environment allows the organization to test out innovations without going straight to the deep end, allowing for bolder and more frequent innovation experiments,\u201d concludes Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


                              \n\n\n\n

                              Video: Corporate Innovation Interview with Mathieu Guerville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
                              \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/XPnUin3yP2Q\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                              Mathieu Guerville heads up the venture capital arm of UL, one of America\u2019s oldest safety testing companies. After decades of doing things the old-fashioned way, UL decided it was time to launch into the future and did so by launching a corporate venture capital fund that invests in startups working on innovative technologies in the safety testing space. In this interview, Mathieu shares insights learned from helping UL execute upwards of 70 innovation-focused acquisitions and internal initiatives.<\/p>\n","post_title":"How to Foster Innovation in a Traditional Corporate Environment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/how-to-foster-innovation-in-a-traditional-corporate-environment\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":672,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2018-07-30 22:52:00","post_date_gmt":"2018-07-31 05:52:00","post_content":"\n

                              The term corporate innovation often brings to mind well-known tech titans like Google, Amazon, and Apple. The idea that large, non-tech legacy corporations like shipping companies or FMCG manufacturers can innovate as efficiently and as effectively as these companies may sound far-fetched, but this is the reality such firms are facing today. Massively disruptive technological trends are upending entire industries, turning market dominance upside down. For corporations to survive and thrive, they must develop a culture of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                              Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, understands this need for corporate innovation all too well. Working with non-tech legacy corporations, Nima has seen the disparity between innovation occurring in Silicon Valley startups and the slow uptake of innovation in large corporations. He sees this disconnect as both a threat and an opportunity for such corporations. We recently caught up with him to talk about what corporate innovation is and how firms can implement it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                              \nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/DqwMXrcO4B4\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

                              Demystifying Corporate Innovation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                              What is innovation? Is it just a buzzword or is it something that can be applied methodically and measurably within a corporate environment? \u201cInnovation is essentially a set of activities carried out to minimize cost and risk while increasing productivity and profitability,\u201d says Nima. While this may be the well-known definition of innovation, Nima points out, when it comes to corporate innovation, theory and practice are different. For instance, while theoretically, all firms can benefit from innovation, in practice, corporate innovation is more nuanced and relies on other factors to achieve success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                              First Optimize, Then Innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                              Nima makes an argument for optimization before innovation with an illustration. \u201cConsider a large multi-unit corporation that has each unit operating as a silo, preventing data from being shared effectively. If such a firm were to go after an innovation strategy, it would face tremendous challenges as it would be trying to apply innovative changes to a disconnected and disparate set of units,\u201d Nima says. \u201cTo get innovation right, the firm needs first to streamline and optimize existing infrastructure, assets and operations to be better positioned to derive maximum value from both existing resources as well as whatever innovation strategies it pursues later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                              Another area Nima sees as playing a crucial role in corporate innovation is structuring. Nima has seen situations where corporate innovation is a departmental unit falling under the general structure of the organization. Here, the innovation team reports to the usual hierarchical leadership structure with typical YES\/NO binary answers. In this setting, innovation becomes stifled because of the layers of leadership it must go through before reaching a crucial decision maker. To avoid this, Nima suggests corporations include in their corporate structure a flat innovation hierarchy connecting internal innovators to key decision makers, in a structure that favors rapid decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                              Picking the Right Corporate Innovation Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                              So how can corporations innovate effectively? We posed this question to Nima. \u201cTo achieve innovation success, firms must have an innovation blueprint that is tied to the firm\u2019s core competency,\u201d Nima asserts. This could mean the innovation strategy focuses on an existing competitive advantage or a new competitive advantage but both within the firm\u2019s existing core competencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                              For instance, in the case of John Deere, the firm\u2019s core competency is industrial machinery. Building upon this core competency with digital innovation in the form of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled machinery serves to reinforce the firm\u2019s existing competitive advantage. On the other hand, Amazon used disruptive digital technologies like cloud computing and Everything-as-a-Service to generate new competitive advantages through its launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which while dominating a different vertical, still exists within the firm\u2019s core competency of software engineering excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                              Once the firm has an innovation blueprint, the next step is to carve out an innovation lab staffed with the best and brightest the firm has. This lab should be responsible for running experiments outside of the firm's existing operations while reporting directly to senior management. Nima concludes by offering perspective to firms looking to experiment with cutting-edge digital technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                              \u201cDisruptive digital technologies are like the tip of a spear,\u201d Nima says. \u201cIf you do not get the rest of the spear right, the tip will not be of any benefit to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                              Optimizing Firms for Corporate Innovation Webinar with Nima Shomali<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

                              Forward-thinking firms must embrace corporate innovation<\/strong> if they are to survive the digital innovation renaissance currently sweeping industries across the globe, which requires a methodical and strategic optimization approach that yields long-lasting benefits. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                              In a one-hour interactive webinar, Nima Shomali, Managing Partner at Acceleration Technology Partners, delves deeper into what practical steps senior executives can take to incorporate a culture of corporate innovation<\/strong> into their firms.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Nima Shomali On Optimizing Firms For Corporate Innovation","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-12-27 20:45:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-12-28 04:45:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/siliconvalley.center\/blog\/nima-shomali-on-optimizing-firms-for-corporate-innovation\/","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":10},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_5"};

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