How do you measure innovation?

Introductory presentation by Yusuf Shirazi, Alignent

• Software to lead organizations through strategic planning processes
• 50 ee's in Carlsbad, 40 more in Phillipines doing R&D

Discussion Leaders: Keith Teare, Zoli Erdos

Notes by Tom Cole of Trinity Ventures.

1. What is innovation?
2. Barriers to innovation
3. Innovation at startups
4. What encourages innovation?
5. Books

More relevant for large organizations, where there is inertia and incumbency (versus startups, where the whole reason for being is innovation -- Yusuf)

Big companies attract people who want stability, crave status quo (though small companies also can have people who don't like change -- Keith's 4 biz model changes at RealNames)

Books

• Blue Ocean Strategy
• Making Innovation Work: How to Manage It, Measure It, and Profit from It
• Innovator's Dilemma
  

what is innovation?

• radical, semi-radical, incremental

• Barnes and Noble (incremental to semi-radical) versus Amazon (radical)
• alternative view in Innovator's Dilemma: continuous/evolutionary vs. disruptive/revolutionary
  

Innovator's Dilemma

• focusing on customers can cause evolution versus innovation
• but true customer understanding, versus just listening to what they say they need, can lead to innovation
  

Innovation at startups: Importance of individual is much greater at startups

• frequently startups are built around an iconoclast
• but still true at some big companies such as Apple

What encourages innovation?

• leadership at top must demand it
• culture must support it
• it happens organically
• "okay to say no, but when you say yes, mean it"
• need cross functionality (coordination between engineering, sales, marketing)
• need discipline around ways of describing technology, customer needs, etc. (Alignent does this)
• Google: self-forming groups, post on intranet, creates innovation but also chaos and frustration b/c of lack of alignment with existing products/businesses

Keith at Verisign
How to grow Network Solutions from $250M to $1B
Six ideas down to two

Managing overlap of small groups is an important part of the process

Both Mike Masnick and Alan Bushell distinguished between invention (or the discovery of a new technology or idea) and innovation which is converting the discovery into a practical product or service. James Bryan Quinn defines innovation as the reduction of an idea to practice in a culture, which again separates the invention or discovery process from the "reduction to practice." Alan Bushell related two anecdotes where he protected seriously creative inventors from the organization (and vice versa) to enable them to make their discoveries, but they weren't able to effectively contribute to the productization.