This was prepared based on the info shared by Nichaloas Wodtke, VP of content and services at Samsung, in Telecom Asia Sep/Oct 2013

1. 12 tips on changing
the game
Nichaloas Wodtke, VP of content and services at Samsung,
shares his insight from 15 years in the business for innovating
in the digital world
Source: Telecom Asia Sep/Oct 2013
Anuradha Udunuwara | anuradhau@slt.com.lk | www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhau | @AnuradhU
1

2. 12. Validate the learning
Define in advance how to determine success
before you collect the data. Otherwise you’ve
the flexibility to interpret data the way you want
– basically reinforcing what you want to believe.
This’s dangerous and it’s not going to help in
the long run. “You’ll fail, but it’ll take a longer
time to fail. You’ll convince your boss, you’ll be
more distracted, you’ll have more emails, you’ll
have more meetings about why it’s successful.
But you won’t capture the core problem.”
Anuradha Udunuwara | anuradhau@slt.com.lk | www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhau | @AnuradhU
2

3. 11. Fewer features
“The people developing products always
insist that adding
more is better.
That’s a recipe for disaster. That’s
called feature creep. It’s completely
dehumanizing software.” Humans are
single-taskers. “We actually do really well
when we focus on one task. And we want
our software to be the same way.”
Anuradha Udunuwara | anuradhau@slt.com.lk | www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhau | @AnuradhU
3

4. 10. Be razor focused
“Everything else is noise. The companies
that succeed are the companies that only
focus on their
product
– not talk
about budget meetings.”
Anuradha Udunuwara | anuradhau@slt.com.lk | www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhau | @AnuradhU
4

5. 9. Data is not a business model
process to get
to somewhere. So if
“It’s a
you want to collect big data, figure out on
day one what you want to do with it and why
you’re collecting it and what the business
rationale is.”
Anuradha Udunuwara | anuradhau@slt.com.lk | www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhau | @AnuradhU
5

6. 8. Put the right people
in the right roles
“We’ve so many people in digital services
wrong roles
that we put into the
.
We take someone who was really
successful in software development so we
want to put them product development,
which is a totally different skill.”
Anuradha Udunuwara | anuradhau@slt.com.lk | www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhau | @AnuradhU
6

7. 7. Quickly iterate and learn fast
“Try to get your cycles down to
3 to 6
months.”
Anuradha Udunuwara | anuradhau@slt.com.lk | www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhau | @AnuradhU
7

8. 6. Create an internal
board of directors
“Surround yourself with people who are
friends, people who understand what you’re
going through and can
provide
advice
.”
Anuradha Udunuwara | anuradhau@slt.com.lk | www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhau | @AnuradhU
8

9. 5. Fewer emails
“Force people to do
emailing
less
. Productivity rises.
You get in the morning and you’ve got 20
emails, and they’re really well thought out.
And the rest you do verbally.”
Anuradha Udunuwara | anuradhau@slt.com.lk | www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhau | @AnuradhU
9

10. 4. Fewer meetings
“
Just cut the meetings
in half. It’s going to be a reward to
everyone. Everyone’s going to be like; ‘Oh
my God, I’ve got more space, I’ve got more
dream time’ – time to think, time to really
process. Give your teams freedom to really
advance and create.”
Anuradha Udunuwara | anuradhau@slt.com.lk | www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhau | @AnuradhU
10

11. 3. Compete on execution,
not on IP
“9
times out of 10, businesses
succeed because they
execute better than their
competitors. The board will ask you to
explain how your digital product is
defensible. Guess what, anyone can do it.
Compete on execution, that’s going to be the
differentiator.”
Anuradha Udunuwara | anuradhau@slt.com.lk | www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhau | @AnuradhU
11

12. 2. Pivot quickly
Don’t think you’ll ever start a company or
built a product that turned out the way you
wanted it. “It never does. You start off on a
journey, you take one step, you see
if
you pivot, you’ll eventually
solve the problem.”
something, you move over here. And
Anuradha Udunuwara | anuradhau@slt.com.lk | www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhau | @AnuradhU
12

13. 1. Find people with
a point of view
“This’s the most important point. So many
people don’t have a point of view, so if you find
someone in your company who has a point of
view, really take care of that person. They’re
really hard to find.” Having a point of view
isn’t something you can train for. ”It’s
something in your DNA. When you find them,
you’ve got to nurture them, you got to pay them
well, you got to keep them on board.”
Anuradha Udunuwara | anuradhau@slt.com.lk | www.linkedin.com/in/anuradhau | @AnuradhU
13