[HN Gopher] Creating a Culture of Innovation
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Creating a Culture of Innovation
Author : fagnerbrack
Score : 35 points
Date : 2022-05-08 09:28 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (changelog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (changelog.com)
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Whenever I read or listen to such interviews I want to hear what
| the people working in these organizations are thinking. Usually
| there is a huge mismatch between reality and what these managers
| are presenting.
| hallqv wrote:
| The irony of having someone from SAP talking about creating a
| innovative culture
| wslh wrote:
| It is not irony, they are looking for something they don't have
| to complement SAP.
| classified wrote:
| Whenever someone says "innovation", I hear "change for change's
| sake". There has to be a reason why they don't call it
| "improvement", "adaptation", or anything else with actual
| meaning.
| mattwest wrote:
| Innovation shares the latin "nov" with novel. Innovation is
| different from improvement or adaptation based on a subjective
| idea of how different and novel it is.
| troelsSteegin wrote:
| Innovation here is higher-risk product discovery - the design of
| new mechanisms to extract value with low assurance that things
| will actually work well. The emphasis here is that managing
| innovation is explicitly about managing risk - methodically
| considering and communicating risk to stakeholders, "failing
| gracefully and fast". Egger from SAP references assessing budding
| products in terms of "desirability, feasibility, viability",
| which is a design thinking thing [0]. A win an innovation program
| is when you don't over commit to risk. You put some resources
| into a program, at some phase assess risk per some rubric, and go
| on the the next stage or not.
|
| He makes the point that in spite of having an innovation
| function, you want an innovation culture: "But what you really
| want to do is not have an innovation team. You just want to have
| people who are focused on willing difficult projects into
| existence, and de-risking those projects. And so in an ideal
| world, what a company, personally, what I believe it should
| strive towards is help the bigger organization to get good at
| product discovery themselves, and not lead innovation or be the
| "innovation office", but rather then be the steward who helps to
| incorporate new methodologies and help them to get better at de-
| risking. "
|
| [0] https://designthinking.ideo.com/
| splittingTimes wrote:
| What is a good approach to enable workers on the ground to
| "willing difficult project into existence in a bigger corp?
|
| Typically, ground workers (devs) plate is overflowing with
| work, coming from product management which are just increments
| or maintenance of existing products.
|
| There is not much Slack build into the daily processes to allow
| for rough ideation, concretization and much less
| implementation/prototyping.
|
| Other then allow for a certain amount of dev time to go into
| innovation (a la googles Friday off for personal project) i
| can't think of much.
|
| What is a good percentage of dev time to go into innovation
| 10%, 25%, ...?
|
| Second question: how do you derisk?
| milosmns wrote:
| Maybe we could organize a discussion panel with genuinely
| interested SAP leaders?
|
| Something like... _" what SAP sees as innovative vs. the products
| we have to use today"_
|
| and try to find some middle ground?
| npalli wrote:
| I found the title of the speaker sort of ironic. Doesn't bode
| well for someone trying to create a culture of innovation.
|
| "Head of Innovation Office and Strategic Projects at SAP Business
| Process Intelligence"
| CharlesW wrote:
| How do you feel that it's ironic?
| civilized wrote:
| I'm tired of innovation worship. Novelty is not the solution to
| all problems. In fact, most new ideas are terrible and a big
| distraction, especially new ideas that are sold primarily on
| their novelty.
|
| We should care more about adaptability, about understanding and
| productively responding to our conditions. Sometimes the best
| response is to stay the course or reuse an old solution.
| rubidium wrote:
| From the transcript " I would say 99% of the change that
| creates value is incremental change, and we're just adopting
| faster and better ways of doing stuff. "
|
| No one is doing innovation worship here.
| civilized wrote:
| I'm glad that they are sensible if you wade through this
| transcript. It'd be nice if they used descriptive terms
| consistent with their message, rather than reaching for
| fashionable cliches.
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