June is Innovation Month in New England. So What?

Kudos to Scott Kirsner for rallying the troops and declaring June as the innovation month in New England. And congrats to Gov. Deval Patrick for jumping on the bandwagon and officially proclaiming June as Innovation Month. Let’s also take a moment to celebrate the residents and organizations who contribute regularly to the innovation economy. It’s their passion, effort and entrepreneurship that gives us the right to claim Massachusetts, especially Boston, as The Innovation Hub.

But like many, I believe that every month is innovation month. In fact, innovation is an every day activity for me — whether I am running the company or working with my team to make sure our global customers are on the cutting-edge of technology and innovating 24X7.

But Scott’s question stopped me dead in my tracks and got me thinking. What’s so important about June? Why not declare 2010 as the start of an innovation decade? Here’s my perspective on June:

Blooming Partnerships: June, as you know, is a popular wedding month (bear with me here). After long engagements, couples look forward to tying the knot and living a happy, prosperous life. Summer is also the time when most couples evaluate their relationships and adjust accordingly, whether they are planning a family or about to become empty nesters. In the world of technology, June signifies the end of the first half and a time to reflect on our business strategy and forecast the future. It’s time to re-engage with customers on the progress of their innovation initiatives. Are the projects blooming or wilting? Are there programs they need a divorce from so they can embark on new initiatives? Granted we are always collaborating with our customers. But June is when we refocus and revisit our game plan and ensure that the relationships are strong and prosperous.

Anticipation: For sport fans, this is an exciting time. The Red Sox are finally hitting their strides. Basketball fans are holding their breath. Who will win the NBA championship? In reality, it’s always nail-biting time in New England — whether you are rooting for a team or innovation breakthroughs. We literally sit at the edge of our seats every day, not knowing what will come next – will a company deliver another game changing product, what medical discoveries will cure terminal illnesses or perhaps a young entrepreneur could save the planet from global warming. Yes, we wait in anticipation for innovations that will not just change our lives but impact the economic prosperity of the commonwealth and the world.

Inspiration:  June is optimal for awakening, from nature to ideas. The glorious weather and coastline nurturers creativity, irrespective of our expertise or interest. And, I can’t think of another city that has as many medical and research institutions as Boston. The academic world is filled with professors and advisors who influence government policies and private initiatives. They also serve as mentors to all the students who get their education here. And after years of preparation and tough internships, thousands of these brilliant minds and eager contributors join the workplace in June, adding to our innovation culture and growth. As an adjunct professor, it’s an amazing feeling to see my MBA students enter the professional world, ready to impact and influence the business community and drive next generation innovations.

The Happening Place: Massachusetts is indeed the innovation hub. Many breakthrough technologies and industries are born here, from medical and life sciences to energy and manufacturing. Just look at the number of events taking place in June and multiply that with events that happen throughout the year. It’s at these events that people collaborate, create and deliver. As an entrepreneur, I can’t imagine being anywhere else. I grew up in the area, worked in multiple companies, collaborated with VCs to build and sell companies. Currently, I run a profitable company with outstanding professionals and we are proud to be working with global corporations to drive and foster their innovation initiatives.

So thanks Scott for making me step back and reflect on things that we take for granted. June is indeed a special month in New England, and possibly around the world.

Here’s to innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and mentors. Let our passion for innovation continue to permeate through our lives, every day of every month. After all, an innovation economy is as good as the people who contribute, and execute well on brilliant ideas.

Defining Innovation

I think we can all agree that innovation is a buzzword today. It seems like everything is an innovation and everyone is an innovator.  Yet, innovation means different things to different people, depending on their perspective or profession. People often talk about innovation being a good idea and a company is judged by the number of patents filed. Is that innovation?

Let me take a moment to share with you my definition of innovation and ROI as it pertains to our business and clients.  

To me, innovation is transforming ideas into market-leading, practical products – products that are affordable and impact life and society every day. Innovation for innovation sake is wasted investment. Innovation must be useful to a company’s target audience not just be a ‘cool’ idea that will hopefully find an audience. As for patents, they must be monetized so they add value to a company’s bottom line and give the company a competitive-edge.

Innovation is also about identifying new markets, improving existing systems and product evolution. Given the recent economy, many companies chose to invest in new market opportunities for existing products or expanded into emerging countries. Improving products is just as important. Often, you might be able to solve a problem by repurposing concepts from another industry or even learning from nature, a growing field called biomimicry. Despite the Latin translation, innovation doesn’t have to be something new.

But most importantly, innovation has to be repeatable and sustainable. It’s not about one brilliant idea but being able to sustain the product innovation process. And, innovation happens across the company not just in the R&D department. Today’s innovation community includes new business development, strategic planning and competitive analysis teams, among others.

Given our economy, innovation must result in revenue growth and increase market share within an accelerated timeframe. Therefore the innovation agenda and ROI must be tightly integrated with a company’s corporate goals.

That’s my opinion. What’s yours?

Invention Machine’s Innovation Agenda

I have been writing regularly about innovation trends and the importance of executives championing a company’s innovation agenda. Now let me share with you my company’s innovation agenda and give you a taste of what’s to come in 2010.

Our innovation agenda is pretty straight forward. Hire and retain the best minds. Help drive and sustain our customers’ innovation initiatives and boost their return on innovation. Our technology is designed to strategically infuse innovation into every step of the product development process and deliver the right products, quickly and cost effectively — which in turn positively impacts a company’s bottomline.     

Like many CEOs, I meet with customers regularly to learn about their challenges and achievements. I then share the information with my team so they can create new technology or programs to meet our client’s innovation goals. Each week I also meet with my executive team and collectively design and shape our corporate agenda. Here are Invention Machine’s focus areas for the year:

Product Development

As leaders in our industry, we pay close attention to our customers needs and act on them quickly. Several months ago, they told us that collaboration and identifying experts were important to their business. We delivered Invention Machine Goldfire 6.0, with automatic expert identification and collaboration functionalities, along with other new features. Now global teams can use the technology to better collaborate and work outside their silos.

As the role of innovation is expanding, so is the usage of Goldfire, our innovation intelligence platform. Initially thought to be the exclusive domain of scientists and engineers, companies now recognize that innovation happens across the organization, every day. Mapping to this shift, we have decided to broaden Goldfire’s innovation workflows and are looking to add new workflows for tasks such as tracking user sentiment and technology landscaping. 

We will also incorporate additional capabilities to manage broad deployments while making the software easier to adapt across multiple departments. New language support will be added to expand Goldfire’s current multi-lingual offerings of English, French, German and Japanese. 

Client Services

This year, our focus is shifting from just successful software implementations to becoming a trusted advisor. To ensure our customers success, my team has created roadmaps to empower users to easily design an Innovation Intelligence Ecosystem, build high performance teams and see return on innovation  within 90 days. Our innovation experts will work closely with individuals to tailor the use of Goldfire to their specific job functions as well as design customized workshops for broader groups that will help the team further accelerate the innovation process.

Marketing

As innovation practitioners and champions, our clients are dedicated to delivering successful projects.  As we all know, just delivering great products and processes are not enough. One must effectively communicate the value of innovation initiatives to their peers and other potential communities across an organization. Therefore I have asked my marketing department to engage with our clients and their internal communications team to create campaigns that will effectively spread the word of their innovation success. This will also help attract people from other departments and geographies who may be able to pitch in as well as learn from best practices, all of which will foster better collaboration and impact revenue.

These are some highlights. Obviously I am not giving you every detail of our corporate strategy. Would you? In the meantime, I’d love to hear how you help drive your company’s innovation agenda.

Stimulating the Innovation Economy

We have long known that the best way to spur the economy is via job retention, job creation and executing on a strong innovation agenda. In most cases it’s up to the CEOs, not politicians, to design the agenda and drive the innovation economy.

Lately we’ve been hearing some positive news that show the economy may be mildly stabilizing. Several companies have reported strong earnings results and America’s GDP rose by 5.7 percent at the end of 2009, the best economic growth in six years. Yet, many people are still losing their jobs and struggling to pay their mortgage.

Granted, turning a global economy around is a Herculean task. I am glad the president is talking about job creation and the economy. But as some of the CEOs advising the government have said, we need policies and programs to sustain economic growth, not just short term stimulus projects.

As politicians and advisors tackle the issue on a macro level, let’s look at what companies can do to stimulate the innovation economy:

Focus: As I have said before, 2010 is the start of an innovation decade. We are on the cusp of major breakthroughs and America could once again top the list of most innovative countries (U.S. is currently #8). But in order to succeed, CEOs must continue to drive the innovation agenda and stay focused on the end game, i.e. profitability and growth. CEOs must encourage teams to create an innovation process that’s sustainable, adopt technology that empowers engineers to deliver the right products the first time and mitigate risks associated with product innovation. No company can afford 12 product failures for every one success, which is the case today.

Practical innovations: CEOs are the catalyst for delivering innovative products and services that impact our world today, from life saving medical technologies to planet saving green products. I often hear about interesting new ideas that claim to be breakthrough innovations. However, if a majority of users won’t adopt the product or can’t purchase it because of high price points, the product is not a useful innovation. And, the company is simply wasting resources and money. Successful innovation should address both functional and economic criteria.

Expand to retain: To succeed in a global economy, companies need long term planning that will mobilize teams and sustain cutting-edge product delivery. If you have happy customers, look for opportunities to expand product usage within your customer base. If you have a successful product line, identify adjacent market opportunities to bring in additional revenue. With sustained profitability and growth, a company can expand its employee base, and an innovative company will find it easier to attract and retain best talents.

Personalization: It’s all about relationships and knowing what your customers really want. This help companies design products or programs that closely match consumer needs. For example, for a B2B business like ours, we have to understand what ‘innovation success’ looks like to our enterprise customers. In most cases, they want to show innovation milestones within 90 days. So we created a “90 Days to Innovation” customizable program that allows Invention Machine Goldfire users to demonstrate success and ROI within 90 days.

Running a company isn’t rocket science and these concepts are not new. I strongly believe that it is our responsibility as CEOs to deliver the results we promise to our employees, customers and shareholders. So, I am sharing the philosophies I use to run my company, philosophies that have made Invention Machine a successful and growing company.

Now that you know my views, I’d love to know yours. What else can companies do to stimulate the innovation economy?

Innovation Trends in 2010

This is the time when everyone is recapping the year and forecasting trends in the coming year. So, let me jump on the bandwagon and reiterate some of the trends I have been talking about based on customer interactions.

Innovate to Dominate: Innovation will continue to be a focus for all Best-in-Class companies. No surprise there. In NESTA’s recent ‘Everyday Innovation’ report, 78% of participants said innovation is key to improving their products and services and 70% said their focus on innovation has been reinforced. Also, 80% claimed innovation is an important part of their role. However, just ‘innovation’ is not enough.

Reign of process and collaboration: In 2010, we’ll see large enterprises as well as small and medium businesses focusing more on structured and sustainable innovation vs. an ad hoc innovation process. Sustainable innovation is the only way for companies to compete globally and drive the innovation economy. In addition, global collaboration with experts will become an integral part of the innovation process so teams can leverage innovation intelligence and deliver the right products the first time.

Changing of the guard: Emerging companies and countries around the world will become more innovative. Innovation leadership will no longer be exclusive to Global 2000 companies or established global powers.  In fact, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland topped the 2008 list of world’s most innovative countries, while the US dropped to number eight. Don’t be surprised to see China and India topping next year’s list. Emerging growth companies will also become innovation leaders as they can quickly amass greater market cap values and overtake or take over yesterday’s leaders. This is possible because lower stock prices in this economy have made multinational companies more vulnerable to acquisitions.

Ideation to productization: In 2009, the US patent applications dropped by 2.3 percent, primarily due to the economy, according to experts. Perhaps this trend will continue as companies will focus more on transforming ideas into commercial, revenue generating products and leverage existing technology from different industries to design new products or solve problems. After all, a company’s true success is measured by its revenue and products sold, not number of patents.

Green is the new black: Companies will continue on the path of green innovation. Today, many companies and government are still talking the green talk. But few are able to design cost efficient products that meet customer demands. In 2010 we expect to see more companies operationalise green innovation across an enterprise, making it a key business imperative for driving profitability and competitive-edge.

These are my top predictions. What are yours?

Government Intervention or Innovation?

Government intervention is not a new, untested concept in America. Banks, mining companies, railroads and now insurance companies and automobile manufacturers have been the beneficiaries of government support for economic and social gains. We still talk about the collapse of the entire economy during the 1930s and the savings-and-loan industry implosion in the 1980s – both times the government stepped in to rescue the economy.

History shows that brief and select government involvement can have some positive short-term impact on the economy. To power America as an innovation economy, however, government should step away from longer term business intervention and direct management of corporate operations.

I’m not suggesting that the government fail to intercede for the protection of tax-paying citizens or the environment. But political intervention without sufficient planning, operational competencies and exit strategies can lead to lackluster performance, a “good enough” mentality, lost competitiveness and a dearth of innovation, whether here or across the globe. Take China, for example. Industry reports cite that state-owned commercial banks in China are largely the cause for sluggish financial services profitability. Complacency has replaced competitiveness and innovation is low.

On the other hand, look at India. Since the government stepped back and opened up the market, innovation has soared.  Tata Motors’ Nano, dubbed “the people’s car,” has made headlines. It provides a safer and more fuel friendly alternative to the two-wheelers that have been the standard mode of transportation for families throughout the country. The cost? Twenty-five hundred dollars, the cheapest car on the planet. That’s just one example of affordable innovation.

A year ago I was in India to meet with our customers and resellers as well as other movers and shakers in the innovation space, including Dr. R.A. Mashelkar, president of the Indian National Science Academy. It was refreshing to hear their views on innovation culture and the impact of global collaboration in India, which has fostered innovation and attracted multinational companies like General Electric to open labs there. I also believe that the country’s tri-parte consortium – the government, academia and industry — has helped India make the list of top innovative countries, along with Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland.

How does government intervention limit innovation?

• It forces companies to think short term and not about what they have to do in the present to gain a competitive edge once the market turns around.
• Political agendas can target CEOs, make them insecure, resulting in their replacement or shifts within a competent board, leading to executive turmoil and instability.
• Cuts are made to R&D budgets, stalling innovation and reducing investments in sustainable innovation processes.
• Innovation workers are cut arbitrarily while administrative, legal and management positions are saved to work through the bureaucracy.

The dilemma in the United States is in dealing with the “General Motors” of America – the situation where the government owns substantial equity in a company. By selling its assets to emerge from Chapter 11, GM, once a powerhouse of patents and products, will no longer be an innovation leader.   

Even consumers agree.  According to a recent article in BrandWeek, “A post-bankruptcy Rasmussen Reports poll found 41 percent of respondents saying the quality of GM cars will get worse with the federal government as the company’s chief owner, vs. 19 percent saying it’ll get better.”  Without innovation, GM will not have the staying power.

So how does a company evolve into an innovation leader, sustain growth and avoid government takeover? Here are my suggestions:

• Understand that the global landscape is undergoing dramatic paradigm shifts.
• Relate the impact of the paradigm shifts and trends to your company and its positioning.
• Be bold in seeking new ideas and identifying the right people to lead your business model, innovation strategy and product development to accurately meet today’s demands.
• Invest in product innovation, similar to Apple’s strategy, in order to generate dramatic results in a turnaround economy.
• Like Boston Scientific, empower innovators with knowledge-enabled technology to accelerate and sustain every day innovation and deliver the right product the first time.
• Ensure the company retains trust and faith with shareholders, bondholders and others at all times.

Following the above guidelines will guarantee innovation leadership, which in turn will lead to positive monetization, without government intervention. After all, sustainable innovation and corporate integrity are keys to driving business opportunities, growth and market-share.

What do you think?