Design and deliver a startup series across employees in all IBM Ireland business units within an accelerated 6-week timeframe to create client-centred value initiatives through design thinking approaches. Framework brought client-valued focussed initiatives through a series of stages from ideation, business and resource planning through to final pitch to a panel of executive 'dragons'. Widespread engagement throiughout IBM business units in Ireland brought the engineering and sales community together in a first-of-a-kind programme which saw 140 ideas propgress through the process. With 32% of 'ideas' making it through to formal submisison we improved attrition on previous start-up initiatoives and the process delivered over 12 fully fleshed project submissions that were executive reviewed for implementation across healthcare, human resources, big data and analytics and sales industry segments.

1. © 2013 IBM Corporation1

2. © 2013 IBM Corporation
Agenda
 Review INCUBATOR Programme
–FRAMEWORK re-cap
–Business unit PARTICIPATION
–LESSONS learnt
–FUTURE direction
2

3. © 2013 IBM Corporation
Starting Point Objectives
1. Create incubation blueprints that will result in client-value (via CAMMS)
2. Present as cross-unit piece of collaborative work within IBM Ireland

4. © 2013 IBM Corporation
4
OctSep showcase
idea generation
workshops
WHY?
• Why do it….what’s the ‘So What’?
WHAT?
• What are you offering?
• Fact-based Value Proposition
HOW?
• Walk it through top to tail
• Anticipate and address objections
RESULT?
• What does success look like?
B
C
F
F
reviews
showcase
Programme Framework & Timeframe
103 48
2A
kick-off
weekly clinics
D
1
3
2
7-Oct10-Sep 17-Sep 23-Sep 14-Oct30-Sep4-Sep 21-Oct 28-Oct
4
implementation
value proposition
market research
customer validation
resources
G
H
The INCUBATORS – get your idea off the ground
deadline - 17 Oct
E

5. © 2013 IBM Corporation
Design Thinking Structure
• user-centric design thinking framework – workshop
and clinics supported by Mentors
• End-objective to present 1 pager business plan that
has been validated against NEED

6. © 2013 IBM Corporation
Programme in #s
37
ideas
12
submissions
5
finalists
2
“winners”
140
collaborators
• 27% of participants put
forward ideas
• Approx 50% participation
in clinics
• 32% of ideas became
formal submissions
• Approx 60% of ideas
underwent some level of
ideation ‘development’

7. © 2013 IBM Corporation7
Programme in #s
Workstream Ideas Submissions Finalists
Curam 2 2 1
GBS 4 2 1
Inside Sales 15 3 2
Smarter Cities 3 2 1
SO 1
Software Support 2
SWG Collaboration 8 2
Watson 2
Grand Total 37 11 5
• highest volume of ‘ideas’
from Inside Sales but 20%
submission rate
• software group prominent
in idea generation despite
slightly higher submission
rate @ 25%

8. © 2013 IBM Corporation
Lessons Learnt – SUMMARY
what WORKED
Attrition @
60%
Workshops &
Clinics
X-division
Participation
Marketing &
Promotion
what DIDN’T QUITE WORK
Showcase
Format
SWG
participation
Team
Formation
Social & Peer-
help
Mentors
future CONSIDERATIONS to IMPROVE
Time Cycle
Education
Dimension?
External
Collaboration
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Lessons Learnt – SUMMARY
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9
A DCB

9. © 2013 IBM Corporation
Lessons Learnt – what WORKED
1. ATTRITION – 64% attrition rate shows the power of a hands on programme
where participants are encouraged to validate their idea and sell their
business case. The alternative would have been 38 raw un-validated ideas in a
box that then needed to be understood and processed
2. WORKSHOPS : Really challenge people to focus on the problem and validating
the solution for that problem. Could be useful to all in our day jobs when
pitching ideas to product managers. Excellent feedback from participants -
they would do it again
3. PARTICIPATION ACROSS DIVISIONS: This was the best initiative I have seen in
terms of participation across divisions and the most commitment I have seen
from GBS. We should build on that
4. MARKETING and PROMOTION - Repeatable structure in place, albeit we may
want to tweak it. I hope we raised awareness on innovation but our
perspective may be swayed by being participants in the process

10. © 2013 IBM Corporation
1. SHOWCASE FORMAT - While fun and encourages participation publicly, judges
do not get a full appreciation of the idea in the 5 min pitch compared to the
view we got during programme. Also questionable about ‘latent’ value sitting
in non-finalists that may be missed due to ‘winner takes all’ model.
2. SWG PARTICIPATION - Not enough submissions from SWG dev community :
mainly Sales, GBS and test orgs
3. COLLABORATION - teams did not form as we hoped. This may have been
because people did not want to share any glory or it could be because mentors
and feedback from business contacts meant no help was needed
4. SOCIAL - Community and forums to provide self-help did not contribute much.
In an ideal world, we should be able to use these to deliver many aspects of
the programme - reality is that a hands on programme is needed.
5. MENTORS: While some worked well, not sure we chose mentors correctly.
Perhaps more product managers or business leads are required.
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Lessons Learnt – what DIDN’T QUITE WORK

11. © 2013 IBM Corporation
 TIME - time needed by organisers which must be managed with their day jobs.
Can we have someone assigned to spend a percentage of their time on this?
 CYCLE - Having a start and stop encourages submissions. We discussed an
ongoing innovation cycle but some kind of deadlines may be needed if
encouraging participation from everyone
 DESIGN THINKING EDUCATION - Perhaps the focus of some future program is
not just on soliciting ideas but also providing education in the form of workshops
 EXTERNAL COLLABORATION – we should start to think about a more structured
way to bring clients into programme to provide value-add to clients, bring dev
and sales teams closer and strengthen validation and discovery processes.
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Lessons Learnt – future CONSIDERATIONS to IMPROVE