Showcasing Collaborative Innovation
FountainBlue's September 14 When She Speaks event was on the topic of 'Showcasing Collaborative Innovation'! We were fortunate to have a large range of perspectives on our panel on the collaborative innovation topic. Our panelists represented the wide range of roles, levels and functions across tech companies small and large, and even representing different industries. But they also had much in common.
They explored many different classes, roles, and responsibilities, bravely trying new things and courageously delivering results in a wide range of contexts.
They have decades of experience, witnessing and contributing to the evolution of technology.
They pay close attention to the needs of the customer, and deliver what the customer is looking for.
They pay close attention to the market trends and advise their customers based on what they see with the market trends.
They are in alignment with the strategic direction for the organization and its leaders. In fact, they have chosen their role and company as they were inspired by same.
The way we do business is very different than it used to be.
Innovation is everywhere - in universities, at standards bodies, through start-ups, in Open Source solutions.
The problems today are much more pervasive, much larger, much more global than they used to be.
It no longer works to be the only local offering as the world has become flatter, so everyone can easily get anything from anywhere.
It's becoming more expensive to solve even simple problems.
They each exclaimed in different ways about the pace of change, the rate of change, the constancy of change. Collaboration helps each of them to best cope with this change.
Collaboration enables people to specialize in specific technologies, partnering with others.
Collaboration helps companies address multiple market segments, again partnering with others.
Collaborative Innovation helps companies to differentiate themselves, focusing on their core value-add, and partnering with others to deliver complementary offerings.
Collaboration allows others to vet and trouble-shoot a solution, before it goes to market.
Collaboration helps all parties to consider additional applications for existing and known solutions.
Collaboration helps with product planning and implementation by identifying more corner cases.
There is less likely to be group-thinking when you are collaborating with a range of partners.
Below is advice on how to make your collaborative innovation projects more likely to succeed.
Gather a wide range of partners and collaborators.
Encourage brainstorming sessions.
Get all perspectives on the table, even from those who are not generally vocal.
Empower and engage all participants.
Encourage all to submit ideas and input, even if they are not involved in the project.
Consider that a solution for one problem may contain ideas and technologies which could be applicable to a totally separate problem.
Be bold and persistent, resilient and positive.
Have the hard and difficult conversations to stretch your own comfort zone and that of others.
It was fascinating to see how each of our esteemed panelists looked at innovation from a different perspective, yet each delivered a new and better product, process, solution, technology.
Please join me in thanking our gracious hosts at TI and our panelists for FountainBlue's September 14 When She Speaks event on the topic of 'Showcasing Collaborative Innovation':
Facilitator Linda Holroyd, CEO, FountainBlue
Panelist Mary Emerton, Vice President, Manufacturing, Nutanix
Panelist Padmaja Nimmagadda, Applications Program Manager, Texas Instruments
Panelist Laura Patton, VP, Customer Solutions, Flex
Panelist Sangeeta Ramakrishnan, Distinguished Engineer, Cisco
Panelist Nithya Ruff, Senior Director, Open Source Practice, Comcast
Panelist Jeremy Yaeger, MGTS Systems Engineer, Texas Instruments