Sometimes the only difference between the winners and the losers is that the winners figure out how to innovate. Innovation is a broad term and this presentation outlines what it means for enterprises and companies involved in developing software. This presentation highlights how innovation can be applied at various stages of software product development and in different ways by applying special techniques, tools and frameworks.
Note: This was also a QCon Shanghai Keynote Talk. Full talk up at http://www.infoq.com/cn/presentations/business-innovation
Perpetual website: http://www.perpetualny.com
1. Innovation in the Enterprise
Applying Innovation in Software Development
Amish Gandhi
Keynote Talk
2. Amish Gandhi
Founder and Principal at Perpetual: Product Innovation and Development for
Finance, Media and Telecom www.perpetualny.com
Innovation Background
• Working on innovating financial information services
• Working on wearable computing solutions for media
• Experience developing emerging technology based products in telecom
• Advanced Study Fellow in innovation at MIT
MS Computer Science from Univ. of Texas, Austin
BS Computer Science from Bombay University
Finance
Media
TelecomBackground
3. Contents
• Intro
– What is Innovation
– What it is not
• Business Innovation
– What it is
– Innovators Dilemma
• Innovation in Software Companies
– How it is different
– Innovation as a discipline
• 7 Steps for Software Innovation
5. What is Innovation?
Innovation is a process that combines
• discovering an opportunity
• blueprinting an idea to seize that opportunity
• and implementing that idea to achieve results
7. What is Innovation (NOT)?
• Innovation is not improvement
– Innovation != doing the same thing better
– Innovation == doing something different
• Innovation does not go unnoticed
– Innovation != something incremental
– Innovation == something that results in big impact
• Innovation is not invention
– Innovation != Invention = the creation of the idea or
method itself
– Innovation == invention applied
9. Innovation and Business Impact
• Growing the core
• Extending the core
• Expanding beyond the core
Innovation path
Business Innovation
1-click shopping Associates Cloud Services
10. Amazon Innovation Path
Market cap $167B
Continuous Innovation
1994 Company incorporated.
1996 Launches Associates Prog
1997 1-Click Shopping.
1998 Music and movies
1999 Auctions
2000 Super Saving Shipping
2001 Look Inside The Book
2002 Launches AWS V1
2003 A9.com search engine
2004 Exposes product data
2005 Amazon Prime
2006 Amazon Unbox (movies)
2007 Amazon MP3
2007 Amazon Kindle
2009 Free Android shopping app
2010 Deals & LivingSocial
2011 Prime instant video
2011 Amazon local
2012 Dynamo DB
2013 New national fulfil. model
2013 Kindle Fire HDX
11. MIT Innovation Radar
Business Innovation: Discovery
Platform/Solutions
Quadrant
1. The unexpected
2. The reality inequality
3. Process need
4. Market structure changes
5. Demographics changes
6. Cust. perception change
7. New knowledge
12. Performance demanded
at market high end
Progress due to
sustaining technologies
Progress due to
disruptive technologies
ProductPerformance
Time
Performance demanded at
the low end of the market
Innovators Dilemma
Business Innovation: Opportunities
Disruptive
technologies
13. Performance demanded
at market high end
Progress due to
sustaining technologies
Progress due to
disruptive technologies
ProductPerformance
Time
Performance demanded at
the low end of the market
Innovators Dilemma
Business Innovation: Opportunities
Motorized
Engine
14. Performance demanded
at market high end
Progress due to
sustaining technologies
Progress due to
disruptive technologies
ProductPerformance
Time
Performance demanded at
the low end of the market
Innovators Dilemma
NoSQL
Business Innovation: Opportunities
16. Innovation in Software Companies
Attribute Effect
1. Disruptive technologies New opportunities for disruption
2. Market trends Exponential customer adoption: Realtime, hyperlocal,
super-connected, always-on
3. Lower Barrier to Entry Ability to create something from nothing much more
easily
4. Competition High number of entrants, big and small
5. Higher level value
creation
S/W dev process evolved – 1-2 week delivery cycle is
typical vs. 3 month cycle
6. Complex Different software solutions for the same problem
7. Can have huge impact
with limited resources
Can unlock new business models. Enterprises should
allocate resources to new innovation
Innovation in Software Companies
17. Performance demanded
at market high end
Progress due to
sustaining technologies
Progress due to
disruptive technologies
ProductPerformance
Time
Performance demanded at
the low end of the market
Innovation in Software Cos: 1. Disruptive Technologies
AWS Android Mapreduce
Bigtable Hadoop Hbase NodeJS
Scala Cloud Computing Big Data
D3.js Coffee Script/Backbone
Data Visualization Elastic search
Nginx Hudson GO R require.js
less/sass/compass, HTML5…
23. Instagram scaled to 30 million active users
with a team of two infrastructure engineers
Innovation in Software Cos.
7. Limited resources, huge impact
30,000,000
24. Innovation in Software Companies
Attribute Effect
1. Disruptive technologies New opportunities for disruption
2. Market trends Exponential customer adoption: Realtime, hyperlocal,
super-connected, always-on
3. Lower Barrier to Entry Ability to create something from nothing much more
easily
4. Competition High number of entrants, big and small
5. Higher level value
creation
S/W dev process evolved – 1-2 week delivery cycle is
typical vs. 3 month cycle
6. Complex Different software solutions for the same problem
7. Can have huge impact
with limited resources
Can unlock new business models. Enterprises should
allocate resources to new innovation
Innovation in Software Companies
26. 7 Steps
1. Make it the norm
2. Make it a company mission
3. Create an innovation culture
4. Experiment
5. Collaborate
6. Every stage counts
7. Scouting
27. 7 Steps
1. Make it the norm
2. Make it a company mission
3. Create an innovation culture
4. Experiment
5. Collaborate
6. Every stage counts
7. Scouting
28. Step 1: Make it the norm
• Make it part of the day-to-day
• Manage it like any other corporate function
• Give it time and resources
• Create a sense of urgency
–Not just for PR purposes
• Create the right innovation culture
Entrepreneurial/Intrapreneurial innovation model
Step 1: Make it the norm
29. Step 1: Make it the norm. How?
Step 1: Make it the norm
-Make it one of your business initiatives
-Make it one of your employee objectives
-Manage it like any other corporate function
Projectize
Focus on your long term goals Go long
Evaluate your innovation culture and make adjustments
Culture
30. Step 1: Make it the norm. How?
Step 1: Make it the norm
Engage legal about protecting Intellectual Property
- Plug in to the IP ecosystem. Creating IP is a bonus.
IP
Spread and sell your ideas
Use visuals at every step and promote on the intranet
and in public boards in the office
Don't talk about “changes”
Change makes people nervous. Talk about pursuing
new opportunities
Perception
31. • Software developers are proud of
their work
• Eg many open source projects
where developers participate to
contribute to a common goal
• Tech is cool again
• Showcase the latest developments
and activities
Nourish and harness intrinsic
motivation
Raise profile of
engineering in the company
Step 1: Make it the norm
Step 1: Make it the norm. How?
32. • Innovation Friendly Process
– Agile
– Lean
– UCD
– Kanban
– Continuous integration and delivery
– Rapid prototyping
– Experimentation time on sprints
• Eg Hacker Friday
Step 1: Make it the norm: Innovation friendly processes
Step 1: Make it the norm. How?
Start with this, structure your teams accordingly
35. • Tools to manage innovation
– Brightidea
– IdeaScale
– InnoCentive
– Innovation Factory
– Imaginatik
– Sopheon
– Spigit
– ……….
Step 1: Make it the norm: Tools
Step 1: Make it the norm. How?
36.
37. 7 Steps
1. Make it the norm
2. Make it a company mission
3. Create an innovation culture
4. Experiment
5. Collaborate
6. Every stage counts
7. Scouting
38. Step 2: Company Mission
• Should be part of your company mission
statement
• An executive champion who believes the new
idea is critical and is persistent about it
• A senior sponsor to marshal resources (people,
money, time) with a focus on innovation
Top down innovation model
Step 2: Make it a Company Mission
39. Step 2: Company Mission
• A small number of ambitious projects vetted by
organizational top layers
• There should be a mix of
– bright, creative minds (to get ideas) and
– experienced operators (to keep things practical)
• A process that moves ideas through the system
quickly
– End to end validation
Top down innovation model
Step 2: Make it part of your Company Mission
40. 7 Steps
1. Make it the norm
2. Make it a company mission
3. Create an innovation culture
4. Experiment
5. Collaborate
6. Every stage counts
7. Scouting
41. Step 3: Create an Innovation Culture
1. Challenge or involvement
2. Freedom
3. Trust or openness
4. Idea time
5. Idea support
6. Playfulness or humor
7. Risk-taking
8. Debate
9. Conflict’
10. Experimentation
1-9 Ekvall G (1996) Organizational climate for creativity and innovation
• Rate from 1 to 10
• Take the sum
= your company’s
innovation culture score
Score Rating
>90% Super innovator
80-90% Highly creative
70-80% Stable growth
60-70% Warning zone
<60% Danger zone
Step 3: Create an Innovation Culture: Evaluate
Evaluating Innovation Culture
42. • Flatter org structures
• Open and powerful development environments
• Services and tools to help launch products
• An attitude of experimentation & openness to experiment failure
• Services and tools to test and get user feedback as early as possible
• Generous rewards and recognition for successful innovation
Attributes of innovative
software culture
Step 3: Culture
Step 3: Culture
43. Creativity Enhancing Techniques
• Brainstorming : usually misunderstood
– Separate idea generation from idea valuation
– Duration? Quantity = quality.
• First ideas are usually old
• As ideation continues, new ones emerge
– 6-12 people to bring different points of view
• Let participants build on each others ideas
Step 3: Create an Innovation Culture
44. Six Thinking Hats
Information (White)
Emotions (Red)
Discernment (Black)
Optimistic response (Yellow)
Creativity (Green)
Facilitator (Blue)
Step 3: Create an Innovation Culture
45. • Identify customer requirements for an
ideal product through Product Box
• Improve retrospectives with Speed Boat
• Prioritize your backlog through the online game Buy a
Feature Online
• Plan a successful project through the game Remember the
Future
• Develop better release plans with Prune the Product Tree
• Understand product usage with Me and My Shadow and
Start Your Day
http://innovationgames.com/agile-teams
Step 3: Create an Innovation Culture
Use Games to encourage
creative development
Innovation games in a software group
46. 7 Steps
1. Make it the norm
2. Make it a company mission
3. Create an innovation culture
4. Experiment
5. Collaborate
6. Every stage counts
7. Scouting
47. Step 4: Experiment
• Run experiments instead of going on hunches
• Experiment lean and quick
– Validate your assumptions quickly
– Discard ideas, move one, fail fast
• Build early (a working prototype or code)
– Many advantages: users, stakeholders
• No penalty for failed experiments
• Focus on building real stuff vs. plans/designs
• Hack days
Step 4: Experiment
49. 7 Steps
1. Make it the norm
2. Make it a company mission
3. Create an innovation culture
4. Experiment
5. Collaborate
6. Every stage counts
7. Scouting
50. Internal Collaboration
• Plan joint working activities across business units
– Eg Editorial and Tech hackathon
– BizDev and Tech roadmap brainstorm
• Embed of teams/rotation
• Exchange programs within groups
• Common codebase (highly indexed/searchable)
• Cross-team skill breakdown and knowledge sharing
Step 5: Collaborate
Step 5: Collaborate: Internal
52. • University collaboration
– Always exploring something new,
fresh and new ideas
– Work together on a project
• Open up your API and conduct
contests
• Engage external dev community
– Attract talent
– Get community to give back
• Invite external company partners
– Talks, brown bag lunches
Step 5: Collaborate
Step 5: Collaborate: External
Involve partners at an
early stage
A critical expert resource in
software innovation can have 10X
the impact of an average software
engineer
External Collaboration
53. 7 Steps
1. Make it the norm
2. Make it a company mission
3. Create an innovation culture
4. Experiment
5. Collaborate
6. Every stage counts
7. Scouting
54. Step 6: Innovate at Every Stage
What you
are not doing
Innovation
Company Vision
Software Product
Development
User Experience
Front End
Middle Layer
Back End
Hardware
Support
Stack
Step 6: Innovate at every stage
55. Software Delivery Process Introspection
What you
are not doing
Innovation
Software Product
Development
Idea generation
Planning
Software development
Verification
Launch
Feedback
Process
Step 6: Innovate at every stage
Company Vision
60. 7 Steps
1. Make it the norm
2. Make it a company mission
3. Create an innovation culture
4. Experiment
5. Collaborate
6. Every stage counts
7. Scouting
61. 7. Technology & Software Scouting
• Actively seek out new technologies starting to have impact
– Competition
– Successful startups
– Research centers
– Conferences (QCon!)
• Trending github projects
• Experiment with new technology
• Trend to tech
ecosystem linking Example
• Wearables growing very fast
• What are the components in the ecosystem
• What new technologies will be adopted
• What new technologies meet our current needs
• How can we adopt them
Step 7: Technology/Software Scouting
62. Technologies/Software Scouting
• NodeJS
• Scala
• Cloud computing
• Big Data
• D3.js
• Coffee script/backbone
• Data visualization…
• Elastic search
• Nginx
• Nolio
• Google GO
• R (V2)
• require.js (javascript dependency
management)
• less/sass/compass : css pre-
processors
Step 7: Technology/Software Scouting
• 3D Printing
• Bitcoin mining
• Machine learning
• Ephemeral data
• Smartwatch
• Grid computing
• HTML 5
• CSS3
• Game theory
• MongoDB
• Django
• NoSQL
• Jquery
• Ember
• Angular
• …….
Sample
technologies
having impact in
last 2 years
63. 7 Steps
1. Make it the norm
2. Make it a company mission
3. Create an innovation culture
4. Experiment
5. Collaborate
6. Every stage counts
7. Scout
Innovation is real work and it can and should be managed like any other corporate function.
But it’s not the same.
It is the work of knowing and not of doing.
The perception is still based on assumptions about eureka lightbulbs flashing over the head of an insprired genius
Vs. well managed diligence of ordinary people
[need a diagram for this]
If it’s Inspiration, then just need to hire the right people and let them do what they have to do
If it’s Perspiration, management must play a more vigorous role: Establish the right roles and processes, set clear goals and relevant measures, and review progress at every step.
Innovation is real work and it can and should be managed like any other corporate function. But that doesn’t mean it’s the same as other business activities. Indeed, innovation is the work of knowing rather than doing.
The Little Black Book of Innovation: How It Works, How to Do It Hardcover
by Scott D. Anthony
It’s vague
Sounds like a buzzword.. Loosely used
.. But it’s what makes the biggest difference
It is doing something different for upliftment
Not just about high productivity and working towards deadlines (trend in software companies)
Everyone should do it and it should be part of the culture
Not just about creating new features
What benefit. Not what product
What benefit. Not what product
What benefit. Not what product
Stimulating innovation is so much more than brainstorming.
Software companies that have a desire to grow will somehow
have to leave their comfort zone of incremental innovation, and might have to look for more radical innovations.
Innovation in software is about more than planning the next product release or service methodology update. We need to embrace perpetual agile business ecosystem incubation and adaptation to increase value creation.
Peter Stuer, Spikes
Intrapreneur
The act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization.
Stimulating innovation is so much more than brainstorming.
Software companies that have a desire to grow will somehow
have to leave their comfort zone of incremental innovation, and might have to look for more radical innovations.
Innovation in software is about more than planning the next product release or service methodology update. We need to embrace perpetual agile business ecosystem incubation and adaptation to increase value creation.
Peter Stuer, Spikes
Intrapreneur
The act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization.
Stimulating innovation is so much more than brainstorming.
Software companies that have a desire to grow will somehow
have to leave their comfort zone of incremental innovation, and might have to look for more radical innovations.
Innovation in software is about more than planning the next product release or service methodology update. We need to embrace perpetual agile business ecosystem incubation and adaptation to increase value creation.
Peter Stuer, Spikes
Intrapreneur
The act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization.
Raise profile of engineering…. With the rise of cool techies being
a geek is cool again
Talent: creative technologists
If a team can’t be fed with 2 pizzas it’s too big
Pairing
MVP
Start at the top :ceos shud back it
Each Squad is an independent lean startup
Squads are grouped together into a Tribes eg Infrasctructure or Music Player tribes. These are incubators for startup like squads.
Tribes: no more than 100 people
Challenge or involvement refers to the degree to which people are involved in daily operations, long-term goals and visions. High involvement indicates motivated and committed people.
Freedom describes the independence and autonomy that people have in the organization with regard to their work.
When trust or openness is high in the organization, people are more willing to share their ideas and to be frank and honest in their relationships with other people in the organization.
Idea time is the time that people can use to elaborate on new ideas.
Playfulness or humor is indicted in spontaneity and ease at the workplace, and these are conductive to innovation.
Idea support refers to the way in which new ideas are treated and people react to
each other’s ideas.
Risk-taking describes the tolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity, for example, whether people can make decisions without being completely certainty and having all the necessary information.
Debate refers to open disagreements between viewpoints and ideas. Debate contributes to sharing and combining different points of view and knowledge.
Conflict refers to emotional tensions in the workplace. If conflict is high, people fight and plot against each other, which is naturally bad for creativity and productivity in general.
Prioritizing
Rationalizing
Comparable Metrics
Discovering best ideas
Brainstorming doesn’t usually work. There is no replacement to taking a hard look at the following all at once:
Information (White) - considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
Emotions (Red) - intuitive or instinctive gut reactions or statements of emotional feeling (but not any justification)
Discernment (Black) - logic applied to identifying reasons to be cautious and conservative
Optimistic response (Yellow) - logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony
Creativity (Green) - statements of provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes
Elaborate
‘Can we come up with new value by a clever combination of available products, data sources, services or technologies?’ (10 W. Codenie et al. propositions)