Reverse Innovation: Create Far From Home, Win Everywhere by Govindarajan Vijay & Trimble Chris

Author:Govindarajan, Vijay & Trimble, Chris [Govindarajan, Vijay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781422157640
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2012-04-09T23:00:00+00:00

Develop a Circulatory System for Insight and Ideas

The third and final step for bringing reverse innovators to life is to link local innovators with the broader EMC community. Indeed, when the company started down the path of turning COEs into idea hives, there was concern in some quarters that ideas generated by COEs would remain inaccessible to others. The goal, to the contrary, was to “expand knowledge locally and transfer it globally.” To that end, EMC pursues strategies to introduce local innovators to their peers in other regions, and to optimize the flow of information within the company in support of the innovation process. Think of it as a circulatory system for ideas and insight.

Indeed, the ability to circulate ideas and insight is a central expectation for EMC’s Distinguished Engineers—Steve Todd and his senior-level peers. The EMC Innovation Network that Kaliski directs is intended to be a hub for that circulation. Through it, the global community helps local innovators push their ideas forward. By facilitating discovery, collaboration, and sharing, the EMC Innovation Network helps combat the syndrome of “local loneliness.” It engenders a stronger sense of connection to the enterprise as a whole. Those connections, in turn, more reliably convert local learning into insight-rich reverse innovation.

For an enterprise to learn—not just hear about, but deeply learn—knowledge has to travel. The objective is not just to make others in the company smarter (though that’s surely a good thing). It’s to keep adding value to an idea. Every project at some point needs an infusion of energy or insight from elsewhere in the company. Therefore, says Todd, it’s often necessary “to collaborate with people I call ‘adjacent technologists.’ If somebody in China has an idea after meeting with a local customer, they may not know how to solve the problem. But with more than forty-eight thousand employees around the globe, somebody knows of a technology that can help.” In a company built on engineering, the problem-solving impulse is strong. Assuming they have the time, people will generally want to help. Creating formal and informal mechanisms for kibitzing is a productive move.

Kibitzing works best when people know one another. To that end, in 2007, Jeff Nick, EMC’s chief technology officer, and Mark Lewis, chief strategy officer for the Information Infrastructure Products business, launched an annual global conference on innovation. It’s a gathering of the company’s innovative might. The event is organized around an innovation competition, open to all EMC employees. A panel of judges, including Distinguished Engineers, evaluates the submissions. Criteria include the extent of an idea’s breakthrough thinking, its potential value to customers, its relevance to EMC’s strategic goals, and the ease with which it can be implemented. Kaliski says enormous esteem comes from winning the competition—or even being a finalist. Besides cash awards and recognition to their owners, the top ideas win investment, attention, and a strong development push.

Perhaps the greatest value of the conference, however, is that local innovators meet their peers. In 2009, more than nineteen hundred employees attended—hundreds in person in Bangalore and the others in satellite locations.

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