Innovation through technology

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Innovation in action
Why should you innovate?
What can you innovate?
How can you innovate?
Innovation as a cycle
Start-up or organic?
Roadblocks – tips & tricks

Innovation is at the heart of the use of MIS.
Technology has evolved greatly and continues to
do so,
creating new markets, products and processes
at every turn of the road,
therefore changing the competitive landscape
and the bases for competition.
Mastering Information Systems therefore is key
to sustaining the thrust towards
innovation based competition
which is the key to company success nowadays.

GOOGLE X-LAB
http://youtu.be/-XE8Cq-ncj0

"If you rethink this problems from the ground up
you can come up with innovative solutions"
Google's R&D 2102 budget = $ 7+ BLN
"Larry and Sergey are behind this 100%"

THE TRIZ METHOD
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нрих

лович

ллер

Genrikh Saulovich Altshuller (1926,1998)
The inventor of TRIZ
Biography
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Working as a clerk in a Russian patent office
Studied 200,000 patents
Found out very few of them are real inventions, most are
just improvements
The same set of rules are applied over and over to
discover something new = the 40 Inventive Principles =
the TRIZ method
An inventive solution does not compromise following a
trade-off, but rather eliminates the contradiction

COMPANIES NEED TO INNOVATE
Ask a company executive about his agenda, how much time did he
spend last week on innovation, rather than on sustaining what's already
there?
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Competitors are exploiting technology to innovate, regardless
Technology is advancing, someone will exploit the opportunity
sooner or later
Product commoditization as an effect of innovation is pushing down
prices and eroding competitive advantages
Adjacent markets are producing substitutive products as an effect of
new capabilities
Innovation is needed for a new comer to enter or to gain a decent
positioning on a market
The business model all resolves around innovation (e.g. VC firms)
The company owns a technology which "per se" can be applied to
different market/products

WHAT CAN YOU INNOVATE?
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Products: we shall do something different
Process: we shall do something differently
Business models: we shall be something else
entirely

Through and by
technology

Technology
abilitates the
production of
something
completely new
Technology allows to
do something
"better" (faster,
cheaper, with a
shorter time to
market, etc.)

PRODUCT SIDE

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A brand new product
Product features
Product positioning
Target market
Usage habits

PROCESS SIDE

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New production machines
Process automation
New organization (e.g. functional vs. matrix)
Insourcing vs. outsourcing
Talents and competencies

BUSINESS MODEL

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Revenue share between different businesses
Product portfolio
Company values/success criteria
Geographical spread

APPROACHES TO INNOVATION

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TQM and Six Sigma
BPR
The blue ocean strategy
The lean startup

TQM
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Based on small incremental changes
Greater personnel control and ownership
leads to wider acceptance
Vastly popular in the 80s,
a lever of the rise
to competitiveness
of the Japanese industry

SIX SIGMA

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Continuous efforts to achieve stable and
predictable process results are of vital
importance to business success.
Manufacturing and business processes have
characteristics that can be measured, analyzed,
improved and controlled.
Achieving sustained quality improvement
requires commitment from the entire
organization, particularly from top-level
management.
It seeks to eliminate defects from any process.

BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY
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A 2005 book from the INSEAD, heavily case based.
Red oceans are traditional markets where
companies compete on a traditional basis
(product, cost, differentiation etc.).
Inevitably this leads to commoditization
and cutthroat competition.
By contrast blue oceans is where the competitive
basis is redefined by invention that overcomes set
rules and traditional boundaries, creating new
space = "value innovation".

THE LEAN STRATEGY
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A 2011 book by Eric Ries incorporating his
experience and thoughts in start-ups.
Specifically originated from high-tech companies.
An embodiment of Silicon Valley ethos and beliefs.
Minimum Viable Product
Continuous Deployment - based on "agile" way of
thinking and specific sw development techniques
Focus on analytics - pointedly A/B testing
Actionable metrics
Pivot

AGILE PROCESSES
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Agile processes are processes that iterate
through a constant renewal cycle of design,
deliver, evaluate, redesign, and so on.
Ultimate goal for some are agile processes
that reconfigure themselves as they ‘learn.
For a process to be agile necessitates a high
degree of use of IT.
Processes that run entirely on the Internet
are candidates for becoming agile
processes

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Innovation in action
Why should you innovate?
What can you innovate?
How should you innovate?
Innovation as a cycle
Start-up or organic?
Roadblocks – tips & tricks

INNOVATION AS A CYCLE
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The number of transistors on integrated circuits
double every two years (Moore’s law)
This s the basis of technology driven innovation
It’s embedded
And it means that it's always happening, rather
than in discontinuous waves.
Therefore "Innovation is a must"; apart from a few
top companies that determine the course of
innovation, all the other need to comply with what
is happening around them.

DRIVERS OF INNOVATION
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Start-ups, VC push
The big 5s (e.g. big data)
Core hardware technology
New applications, new devices (e.g. Kinect)
Consumers invent new usage patterns (e.g.
texting)
Individuals creativity (e.g. BitTorrent)

LEARNING TO INNOVATE
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So the problem is not innovating; it's rather learning to
innovate.
You need to create a "learning organization" by:
Hiring, recognizing, rewarding talent
Creating a "permission to fail" culture
Allowing time and resources for discovery (e.g 20% time rule
at Google)
Reducing hierarchical distance
Developing a well set up approach to innovation (project
management)
Creating shared metrics that define success

You cannot buy your way to innovation;
innovation is something you become, not
something you insert or attach.
Still, innovation through technology requires
the acquisition of a distinct set of systems and
competences that by definition were not there
before.
Therefore there are a number of paths you can
pursue.

PRACTICAL PATHS TO INNOVATION
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Buy a company that owns what you want
(patents, systems, competences, sw or hw,
etc.)
Buy talent on the HR market
Partner with a company that complements
with you
Use consultants that can teach you the way
Find talent in your own ranks
Specialize a unit inside the company

REAL LIFE HANDS ON ISSUES (1/2)
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The first person that needs innovation is ... yourself - the
management team is old fashioned or at least not "à la page"
Most of the company people grew up in a pre-Internet
revolution world
The set of rules and standards in the company stifles
innovation (bureaucratic, hierarchical, centralized, etc.)
Some (a lot) of people have something (a lot) to lose from
innovation
Most of the company resources are devoted to maintaining
the core business who is under fire; innovation remains a
night job

REAL LIFE HANDS ON ISSUES (2/2)
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It's hard to attract talent that will run to more
fashionable (innovative) companies
Metrics defining success are unclear; this allows
individuals to under perform
Innovation calls for a lot of bells and whistles that
in reality hinder and hide real matter-of-fact
efforts
Innovation was born in a period of strong economy;
negative cycles make it necessary to protect young
and still weak offsprings

Innovation through technology

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