Inspiring Innovation @EMC

Over the past few months I’ve become more involved in EMC Innovation Process. Very often when people talk about Innovation they are focused on describing the next big product, the next WhatsApp revenue opportunity. Innovation is about more than just coming up the next big idea but a process to transform ideas into opportunities that can generate value. Unfortunately the discipline of Innovation Management is young and immature. In a large company like EMC, there is a constant battle for funding and resources for projects. Most of the financial governance models used favor projects with predictable revenue, preferably achievable in the short term, with minimal risk. In order for Innovation projects to be better funded we need methodologies optimized for Innovation projects.

This past week Joanne Hyland from the rInnovation Group presented to us at EMC on this topic. Joanne Hyland is a published author with many years of practical experience, and successful research on the process of Innovation. Joanne shared the top challenges companies have with Innovation:

• Managing Innovation Uncertainty
• Continuum of Innovation
• Company Culture

Innovation is chaotic and full of uncertainty. The process of innovation must seek to manage Technical, Market, Resource, and Organization (TMRO) uncertainties. As we know there are different types of innovation projects in large companies. Joanne described three types of innovation:  Incremental, Evolutionary, and Breakthrough. All three types of innovation projects are valuable and important to sustaining companies but have different levels of complexity, market timing, and revenue potential.

The third challenge is culture. Most organizational systems are optimized for operational excellence and efficiency. These systems tend to make it difficult to track and measure innovation project progress. Innovation projects require different types of systems focused on learning and experimentation. In addition, most senior managers are focused on ongoing operational excellence and have limited freedom to support innovation projects. Organizations have to be ambidextrous and support both operational excellence and innovation projects. While core business operations and innovation activities must co-exist, typically leadership must be focused on one or the other.

 Joanne described a three phase innovation methodology to manage innovation projects:

• Discovery – document ideation in business terms
• Incubation – prototype solution in one or more phases
• Acceleration – bring to market

Each of these phases are important and enable the next phase. Joanne’s has found many companies she works with will try to skip or move through the Incubation phase too quickly trying to get to the payoff. Most of the time not completing the Incubation phase results in the opportunity not realizing its full value or it simply fails. The most successful companies are disciplined and fully execute each phase.

Innovation is hard but it is critical for companies to do it well to be successful. Joanne discussed some the most difficult challenges:

• Managing Uncertainty
• Continuum of Innovation
• Company Culture

The Discovery, Incubation, and Acceleration (DIA) methodology is an easy to understand, phased approach to manage innovation projects with different levels of complexity and risk. We are in the early stages of the Innovation Management maturity. The work that Joanne Hyland and her company rInnovation Group combined with the research at universities like Rennselear (RPI) is critical to understand. I look forward to finishing Joanne’s new book Pivot. A recording of her presentation is available here.

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