Slides from my presentation at 33rd Degree conference. Many companies from software industry deal with the problem of maintaining its innovative character over the course of time, especially after achieving bigger size and the maturity. Innovation is difficult (or impossible) to measure and calculate its ROI. However losing innovation means sooner or later the end of the business. So some of the big bosses of big corporations even cry - “Innovation happens elsewhere” - or simply conclude that maintaining innovation is only possible via ongoing acquisitions of smaller, still innovative companies. We witness it very frequently. Wojtek will share his insights about which values, rules and practices one can foster or apply in a software company (of any size) to let its employees implement their most ambitious and crazy dreams which is the key to the innovation.

1. Platinum Sponsor
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
INNOVATION IN PRACTICE
Wojciech Seliga
@wseliga

2. Who am I?
Co-Founder & CEO Senior Dev Manager
My innovations … well, …

3. – (E.Okoń-Horodyńska, wykład 1, str.9), Encyklopedia Zarządzania
“innowacja jest procesem polegającym na
przekształceniu istniejących możliwości w nowe
idee i wprowadzenie ich do praktycznego
zastosowania"
“innovation is the process of transformation of the
existing possibilities into new ideas and
introducing them into a practical use"

4. Radical Change to Products and Services
Radical Change to Processes
Incremental Improvement to Products and Services
Incremental Improvement to Processes

5. Transformations may be small…
❖ better UX%
❖ mobile client%
❖ auto-completion of user data (e.g. location) %
❖ price, or even availability for free%
❖ integration with system X%
❖ networking effect

6. Innovation outside of the products
no direct sales - say goodbye to golf%
cheap software for enterprise%
ubiquitous self-service%
publicly known pricing%
no discounts
agile contracts%
public and fixed pricing of services - customer independent%
built-in protection against vendor lock-in

7. Encouraging innovation (traditionally)
❖ Monetary Bonuses /
Promotions for patents%
❖ Courses on innovation …%
❖ Processes “establishing”
innovation …%
❖ EU funds…
Photo by justjenn - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

8. “Innovation happens elsewhere”

9. –$ Open Source as Business Strategy, Ron Goldman, Richard P. Gabriel
“Regardless of how smart, creative, and innovative
you believe your organization is, there are more
smart, creative, and innovative people outside
your organization than inside.”

10. Acquisitions

11. $500 $49.95→

12. Problems around innovation
❖ Innovation is expensive%
❖ Innovation does not have concrete ROI%
❖ Innovation is risky%
❖ Innovation requires creativity%
❖ Innovation requires courage to fail%
❖ Innovation is impossible to plan and execute%
❖ Innovations happens by itself

13. Innovation different
Photo by m.a.r.c. - CC BY-SA 2.0

14. Environment supporting innovation

15. Idea Brown Bags

16. hours

17. Coffee/Beer + Pizza + Passion + Freedom = ?

18. ugly code
running software
demo quality
unmaintainable
naive
implementation

19. ShipIt 27 Sample - A finalist

20. ShipIt Experiments
Photo by Roberto Rizzato - CC BY-NC 2.0

21. clean code
polished - UX
maintainable
stable product
20% time

22. Innovation
Week

23. New hire < Veteran
?

24. Bootcamp
Photo by Stuart Heath - CC BY 2.0

27. Our experience
Rules%
Processes%
Bookkeeping
Innovation

28. Access to information
Sales data Trends User feedback Tried out strategies

29. OCNB

30. Deliberate constraints
Photo by Poul-Werner Dam - CC BY 2.0
constraints ≠ savings

31. – Leonard Bernstein
“To achieve great things, two things are
needed: a plan and not quite enough time.”

32. Meta innovation
Photo by Raymond Bryson - CC BY 2.0

33. – http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/
innovation.html#ixzz343mR7Q00
“Innovation is synonymous with risk-taking and
organizations that create revolutionary products or
technologies take on the greatest risk because they
create new markets.”

34. “Passion to Fail”
Photo by AlmazUK - CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

35. Failure is not an option.
It’s a step.
Photo by kid static - CC BY-NC 2.0

36. Failure Permitted Zone
Cost of failure is
close to zero
Photo by Xerones - CC BY-ND 2.0

37. Failure Permitted Zone in IT
❖ Automated tests%
❖ Continuous Deployment%
❖ Partial and staged Roll-outs%
❖ A/B tests%
❖ Easy roll-forward, easy roll-back%
❖ Instant upgrades (zero downtime)%
❖ Failing fast!

38. Feedback is the key
❖ Fast!%
❖ Direct!%
❖ Public bugs, user forums, suggestions%
❖ UX tests, prototypes, user interviews%
❖ Dogfooding%
❖ Monitoring and analytics (SaaS!)

39. scaling innovation

40. scaling innovation

41. scaling innovation

42. scaling innovation

43. Can teams help?

44. Copying from Open Source
Photo by Yannis - CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

45. Discoverability
❖ Search%
❖ Inbound Links%
❖ Transparency%
❖ Wiki%
❖ Repos
Photo by Tobias Leeger - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

46. Low barrier to entry
❖ Up-to-date documentation (wiki, wiki, …)%
❖ Source code access at hand (at least read)%
❖ Easy setup%
❖ Clean and understandable code%
❖ Automated tests%
❖ Operational CI environment%
❖ Code review platform (e.g. via pull request)%
❖ Easy release / roll-out procedure

47. Innovation happens through collaboration
Getting things done happens through individuals

48. by Sémhur under licence CC BY-SA 3.0

49. Photo by Mark Roy - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

50. Everyone can innovate
and succeed!

51. @wseliga
Always looking for innovative people
wojciech.seliga@spartez.com