Events

Being an Entrepreneur in a large Organization

Avichay is an organizational consultant, specializing in corporate innovation. He is also a partner in Duco, a consulting firm that specializes in entrepreneurial processes in large organizations. He has been doing this for the past five years. Before that, Avichay was a producer in the media industry.

The Innovation Gap

Working as an organizational consultant for a few years, Avichay found himself constantly discussing innovation to the point he realized he wasn’t bringing enough value to his customers as a traditional consultant. Then he met Elena and Dan, his now-partners in Duco and they started discussing the gap between the outcomes innovation provides to the Israeli startup ecosystem and the outcomes it brings in the corporate world. Over this period of discussion, the three of them came to realize that the gap is mostly due to the lack of execution methodologies within large organizations. In other words, corporate innovation was mostly focused on the ideational and product development stage but not enough on the product market fit stage of the innovative solutions. They believe this part is the most important and most intense in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and it provides the missing link. They, therefore, created methodologies and models that would enable corporations to execute innovative ideas in the same manner as they would in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR ORGANIZATIONS TODAY IS TO REALIZE THAT IDEAS ARE NOT THE FOCUS OF THE INNOVATION.

Ideas are just the starting point of a much more important journey that continues to the product market fit and the implanting of cutting edge technologies. Such a process should be measurable, systematic, and well-managed so that it speaks the language of the organization and embraces the organic organizational mindset. Innovation is a strategic management process and not an ideational event.

Measure once, measure twice

Avichay says, based on his experience, the main challenge for companies is their inability to measure and foresee the potential within innovative ideas. They either disregard the idea as crazy or prefer to invest heavily in an unchecked idea without any room for staggered validation and pivoting.

Duco has recently finished a very challenging project with the IDF. It took some time for the organization to understand why it had to innovate. They knew they had to because everyone else was doing so, but they didn’t fully understand why. The process included mapping the pros and cons of an innovation unit. On the one hand, this made life a bit more difficult for people who had got used to doing things a certain way. On the other hand, the army’s customers are usually young and up-to-date people. Another challenge in this project was the difficulty in sharing information within such a highly classified organization. During the six-month process of setting up the unit, Avichay interviewed many of the key people in the unit and was able to find the right motivations for innovative processes. He was then able to design a system that included measurement and the option to correct the course. The emphasis on creating the right process, which included constant evaluation and re-evaluation insured that the project was not just a publicity stunt. More importantly, it will bring change in the way decisions are taken and new technologies are embraced.

Innovation in Zim – It’s about the Business

Zim is part of what makes the world go round – literally. Roughly 90% of world trade is carried out by the international maritime shipping industry and there are over 50,000 merchant ships trading internationally, transporting every kind of cargo.

As an industry, Zim is not known for its technological advancement or commitment to innovation. However, Chief Innovation Information Officer, Eyal Ben Amram says there is an understanding that the industry, which has hit hard times in the past few years, needs to embrace the new vision.

Zim are now taking a few cues from the aviation industry, exploring revenue management and dynamic pricing. They are also exploring working with bots, digitizing, and expanding their e-commerce presence in order to reach smaller Small/Medium Enterprise (SME) customers.

Challenges

The main challenge facing Zim is a price decline, which affects the entire industry. Its only chance to recover is to become more profitable. One of the main ways of doing that is reaching the end customers directly and cutting out the middle man, as well as enlarging the customer pool.

Doing that is not that straightforward. Shipping is considered a low-tech industry that is behind on technology, and needs to “skip a generation” and move directly to current technology without necessarily adopting the previous generation yet.

The good news is that they have taken up the challenge and are carrying out different complementary processes. Their present focus is on digitization (easy to do business) and smart systems.

The moving parts of innovation

Innovation is a company-wide effort. Zim has adopted the design thinking method and is now in the process of implementing Agile management techniques in the different departments. There are a number of different departments and processes, both internal and external, put in place in order to insure the best results.

While they don’t have an incubator per se, working with Startups plays a big part in what they do. Eyal says they usually try to be the companies’ first big partner. They don’t have a specific focus but work with a variety of startups dealing with AI, predictive analytics, cyber and more. One area they are excited to take part in is blockchain and they will soon be the first carrier to implement a  bill of lading

At the same time, Zim have set up a new CTO department within the IT to define the technology, vision and to help select and implement external innovation tools. This department has proven to be very dominant in the innovation processes Zim is performing.

Zim are also ramping up their e-commerce activity and creating a new website. This will provide more digital services and will be accessible to private and smaller end customers. Recently Zim recruited a Chief Digital Officer, whose role will focus on plotting a digital roadmap for the company.

For innovation to be successful, it has to be business savvy. So, apart from working with startups and the technology vision department, an important part of the innovation mechanism in Zim is the BI unit. This is a strong unit, which is able to provide business tools – analyze a customer’s profitability and create accurate analysis. Eyal says its importance cannot be stressed enough. No matter how innovative the technology, it is likely that implementation will fail if it is not strictly aligned with the business goals and the business units.

How to measure success

It is a challenge to quantify the direct contribution of innovation to the company’s revenue, but Zim work hard to define KPIs in advance. They also choose projects based on ROI estimations and make sure to establish standards and measure implementation.  

Why Innovate?

Eyal mentions that Zim has several objectives when it comes to innovation. Part of their goal is to create an innovative brand. Another component is to improve productivity and increase their revenue profitability. Their projects usually provide a combined objective, for example, their work with block chain stems both from the future profit potential and also from their desire to be industry leaders in that field.

For Eyal, Innovation is not just about technology: it is largely about business, and business-oriented thinking. Even with the most exciting technology, if the business partner is not there it’s not going to work.

Eyal Ben Amram, CIO of ZIM.

From Entrepreneur to Corporate Innovator

Dan Toma is an innovation practitioner who doesn’t define himself as a consultant. Dan started out as a start-up entrepreneur with a couple of companies of his own; then he worked with a few startups and accelerators. Dan started getting more interested in corporate innovation, at first out of curiosity. He found it fascinating that people who don’t have any money are able to create amazing products that people like, while the people who have ample funding are not able to do so. It seemed paradoxical to him how organizations striving for liquidity are being more innovative than organizations that have a lot of financial resources at their disposal.

Dan started getting more and more involved with this topic, got a job with a major company in Europe and saw with his own eyes the difference between start-up and corporation culture. Dan says he was really excited to work in this new arena but, at the same time, it was really frustrating to face so many challenges and roadblocks. He started to believe there has to be a better way of doing things. With his two co- authors (Esther E. Gons and Tendayi Viki),   he wrote “The Corporate Startup,” in which they report that, even while working in different industries and locations, they encountered the same questions and difficulties.  

Dan is proud of the work he has done with corporations. But one project he is really proud of is not a corporate innovation per se.  In 2015-2016 he was working in South East Asia for the government of Vietnam and helped to develop a national innovation ecosystem including an accelerator program. Part of the project included taking all the lessons they learned and exporting them to neighboring Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

Corporate life insurance

The way Dan sees corporate innovation is that of a life insurance for a corporation. Without innovation, a corporation cannot exist. It will not be able to survive in the future. In much the same way as you would pay a monthly premium for life or health insurance as an individual, so do corporations need to budget for innovation. If you spend on innovation, you have the option to adapt and grow, although you may not necessarily need it. However, if you are not spending on innovation, you have no way of growing. In today’s disruptive environment, Dan finds it shortsighted not to invest in innovation. Even if you don’t want to capitalize on those options created by the innovation department, you still have them in case something goes south and you can pretty much try to utilize those existing new ideas that you’ve created.

The Innovation Web

Corporate innovation is not a structured list but a web of challenges influencing each other. One of them is definitely culture. A certain corporate culture instills in people the fear of trying out new things – it’s all inherited in the culture. Another thread is Human Resources. The HR department keeps hiring people that are really good at following directions, when you actually need people who are breaking out, trying to find and do new things. Budgeting is another big issue  – it’s crucial how you structure the budget for innovation.  Another aspect of this web is how to measure innovation.

Although there are many differences in challenges and strengths among countries or industries, you can see the same issues hounding them. In some organizations they might find it hard to practice ideation, while in others there might be an over-regulated environment. But it all boils down to the same thing: lack of incentive to innovate.

The downfall of the corporate accelerator

Back in 2014-2015 corporations were really happy to invest in corporate accelerator programs. Dan believes we are starting to see the downfall of such programs. In fact, a lot of corporations are now moving away from the idea of “et’s build a lab and the innovation will happen,” which he believes is a step in the right direction.

No silver bullet

The other new trend Dan keeps seeing is that many corporations are now moving into start-up collaborations. They say, “Well, we can’t create new ideas in our labs, so let’s just choose to collaborate with startups.” This is happening in many different companies throughout Europe but he doesn’t know if this is good or bad or where it’s going to end up.

Dan believes this start-up approach is still not going to solve the problems of corporate innovation mainly because corporate leaders should stop having a silver bullet approach to sparking innovation. They think: “The silver bullet is called our accelerator,”, or “Thr silver bullet is called startup collaboration.”. No, there are a lot of things that you need to do in order to become innovative. Just doing one is not going to help.

Dan started getting more and more involved with this topic, got a job with a major company in Europe and saw with his own eyes the difference between start-up and corporation culture. Dan says he was really excited to work in this new arena but, at the same time, it was really frustrating to face so many challenges and

Innovation in Nine

The Hard Work of Innovation: 9 tools to help you to manage

Is your Organization innovative?

All (or most) organizations want to be considered innovative, but few actually innovate in an organized, reliable or effective way. There are many methods and models for innovation: Closed, Open, On the edge. Some try to spark innovation through ad hoc efforts like hackathons or task forces; others set up accelerators and incubators to work with startups, while some, like P&G, build large-scale innovation factories. Whatever the model, the basic blocs are the same – Ideas, People and Process.

Innovation managers are tasked with bringing some order to the chaos of changing worlds. In this article you will find platforms and software that will help you do just that. From sourcing and managing ideas through the Open Innovation model, to Ideation platforms and community management, we are proposing a way of maintaining innovation for the long term.

Open Innovation

Open Innovation applies the principles of free trade to innovation, advancing new ideas through the use of tools such as partnerships, joint ventures, licensing and strategic alliances. By collaborating with outsiders—including customers, vendors and even competitors—Open Innovation enables the laws of comparative advantage to drive the efficient allocation of R&D resources. By reaching beyond corporate borders, a company can import lower-cost, higher-quality ideas from a wide array of world-class experts to improve the speed, quality and cost of innovation. This approach allows the business to redirect its own innovation resources to where it has clear competitive advantages. Ideas are also exported to businesses that can put them to better use.

Chaordix

Chaordix specializes in community innovation and crowd activation. Chaordix uses crowdsourcing to help organizations gain sustained community engagement and predictive intelligence with their very own technology, Crowd Intelligence™. The process can be applied to deliver ideas, intelligence and solutions from the collective wisdom of participants of team insights programs, B2B forums, and product innovation communities.

100% Open

100% Open is an open innovation platform servicing top-notch corporations. Clueless how to start? Their 100% Open Tool Kit provides a list of what you need for your company, and suggests what you should use. For example, are you setting an innovation strategy? Then you’ll be provided with the necessary tools you need to facilitate the process.

OpenIDEO: A Platform to Harness Collaboration for Social Good

OpenIDEO is an open innovation platform where people from all corners of the world collaboratively tackle some of the toughest global issues through launching Challenges, programs, and other tailored experiences.

A Challenge is a three-to-five month collaborative process that focuses attention on the topic and creates a space for community members to contribute and build off each other. This approach is modeled on IDEO’s design thinking methodology.

Idea Management

Increasingly, companies will compete based on the speed at which they can discover, develop and implement ideas for new products and services. To compete at this level, organizations must efficiently tap into the creativity of all of their employees. Not only that, but they must also be adept at channeling employees’ creative energies to key business issues — gathering and evaluating ideas efficiently, and quickly identifying those with the greatest bottom-line potential for implementation.

Idea management technology is a type of enterprise software that can help to make such an innovation strategy possible. These new Web-based applications enable companies to solicit targeted ideas from all employees — regardless of their geographic location — and funnel them to a centralized online database. Idea management systems also provide structured processes for evaluating and sharing ideas, so managers can quickly zero in on those with the greatest potential.

Brightidea

This innovation management software is a SaaS (software-as-a-service), accessible via a Web browser, for tracking innovation programs within organizations. It’s a good arsenal for innovation program leaders who have advanced knowledge in harnessing open innovation within an organization, where a record of all the activities, from hackathons to crowdsourcing to design competitions, is managed. The platform provides a complete suite from idea collection to the execution of the entire program to global customers.

Spigit

Spigit participants are already familiar with your business, so you can gain more valuable ideas for product development and innovation from them. Who are the participants? The community itself, which includes the employees, partners and customers. With extra (and by all means, hundreds and thousands of) brains and eyes to think and see beyond the company’s perspective, you can identify and drill for new ideas.

Community

Communities serve many roles. In innovation, they are one of the major elements that ensure sustainable, repeatable and scalable innovation. Community provides the organization with the option to work outside the structured hierarchy, and identify the people who are most interested and committed to carrying out innovation projects. Through the community, innovation leaders can gain and provide procedural, resource, social and knowledge support as well as amplify their achievements. They may come in different sizes and levels of inclusivity, but they all serve the purpose of advancing innovation in and out of the organization.

Some platforms on which innovation communities can be managed:

1. Mobilize

Mobilize is a community management platform, a space in which your members would love to stay connected, participate in discussions, and attend events.

2. EXO Platform

eXo Platform offers a large set of collaborative tools uniquely integrated around a social layer. It has a user-centric design that generates spontaneous engagement. In addition, eXo Platform is open source software and favors open standards for better integration with existing IT systems such as a user directory, single sign-on systems or business-specific applications. It’s also an applicative platform coming with APIs and high customizability that can be leveraged by developers for socially-enabling your business.

What makes eXo Platform a prime tool for collaboration is its design as a social application. It is built as a social platform and is integrated with social tools that make work and work-related processes, such as document management, community building, etc, fast and easy.

3. Vanilla

Vanilla is cloud-based community forum software for building customer loyalty, growing

sales and improving customer service. Vanilla is powerful platform to serve as a portal for customers to help each other and deflect tickets, where customers ask questions and accept each others’ answers.

Using a combination of these tools to manage the different stages of the innovation process – from ideation to implementation – can assist you as an innovation leader to ensure prolific, sustainable innovation in your organization.