3 Insights into Untapped Corporate Innovation

28. February 2012 by justdanika.

No matter the size of your company, the hurdles and issues we face are the same.  I’ve been tackling “innovation” inside of at&t for a year and a half now and these are the core take-aways for creating innovative practices inside of your company.

1. Make powerful decisions and keep moving

Someone on the team needs to be empowered to make decisions. These decisions need to be at every level from is this a good, innovative project worth exploring to what should the name be. Outsourcing a decision to a group that doesn’t have responsibility for the success or failure of a project is going to take time and stunt momentum.

A powerful decision creates a sense of excitement and buy-in as well. Nothing like some team spirit and passion to keep innovation brewing.

Examples:

-At AT&T, during a fast-pitch session with small companies, there is literally 3-5 high level execs who, as soon as they step out of the room, give you a thumbs up or down

-Outsourcing a name to a 3rd party brand consultancy resulted in a bunch of names that the whole team thought were completely off. It created animosity and a sense of failure. What’s in a name? EVERYTHING

2. Always listen openly to emotions of fear and anxiety

When you get wrapped up in a great idea, vision or execution of a great idea, you can’t forget that not everyone has the same needs from an innovative project. Brand, marketing, engineering, business development and other related teams are going to view your project with their own filter. If they work on this project with you, they need it to help them succeed and look good inside of the company. Make sure they are fully onboard with the entire project, not just their section.

Examples: 

-Speaking with the now owner of a project I worked on, they were fearful of if this could ever make money. Looking deeper into the anxiety, it seemed a handful of other projects that were shorter, quicker wins had also recently been hitting really bumpy roads. She needed to make some money for the company soon, not in a year. This helps frame the conversations, support and milestones of the project.

-We need to work with this vendor. We do? Yea, they are smart, can bring insightful value and they have been working in this space for a long time…oh yea and they are a close friend of one of the high-up c-levels. Keep probing positively and openly if you aren’t convinced of a choice.

3. Have some fun

Innovation, creativity and value live inside of passion, excitement and fun. The minute you add too many metrics, responsible parties or process is the minute you sacrifice the BIG win.
Even if you are looking for incremental innovation, having fun with the idea helps put ideas on the plate for 5 years from now. Being able to see the larger future and expression of a project drives investment into a project.

Examples:

-If you are still talking about it when you get home, you know you are on the right path.

-Working on a new project around the goal of the next 2 months was cool, talking about what it means for the future of mobile communication, is way cooler.

-Giving a project a stage recently, took a forgotten initiative back to the most interesting conversation at the lunch table.

-When you sit to make a keynote deck, do it with a co-worker. See how the story develops and use the collaboration to create investment into the presentation.

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no more excuses

5. February 2012 by justdanika.

My mom, in her mid-30s, left her associate CPA job to, with a partner, to start her own public accounting firm.

“You know Danika, because I was good, I wasn’t discriminated against.”

Reading a recent NY times article, it refers to Sheryl Sandberg talking about women in tech:

“Specifically, how women, in her view, must take responsibility for their careers and not blame men for holding them back.”

If you are good, and you truly believe that, then you are the only one who can create the career you want. It isn’t going to just happen to you.

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Women succeed in unique ways because of some

Natural Characteristics:

1. We can appear/be more approachable
2. We create stronger, more personal networks
3. We bring unique experiences to a conversation
4. When we do well, we are more memorable because we are women

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Based on the powerful women I have interacted with, these are the other

Characteristics to Master:

• Be Confident
• Speak-up without Fear or Reason
• Share Relevant, Concise Stories
• Be Action-Oriented
• Be Willing to Bring-it in an Intense Conversation

Combining our natural characteristics with the strong skill sets needed to get ahead, there are no more excuses.

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Ref:(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/business/sheryl-sandberg-of-facebook-staying-on-message.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all?src=tp)

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thank god for geeks…

22. July 2011 by justdanika.

When you live, work and connect with the geeks of silicon valley you have to get excited that they actually think that talking about the finer points of open source cloud computing is great lunch conversation. I engage in the discussion about which key value storage is appropriate for rich health data and though it might be nice to know about if they have kids or what their life is like, I am thankful that these geeks are having this conversation.

 

Note that these aren’t boring discussions about bits and bytes; they are conversations about the future of technology and how it is going to shape society. The choices these geeks make are going to shape connected home, mobile health care and the ability of new technologies to reach your hands. They are the ones  making the decisions that can enable your experiences.

 

As consumers, we only really notice the end experience we get on our phones or computers. We don’t think about the fine design decisions going into what software is running on their cloud, choices they made on storage and what standards they used to reduced latency (lag) in your experience.

 

I’m proud to be here, as an engineer, as a designer, as a geek who is working with people who love technology so much that they will really dive into the little differences in cloud technologies over their lunch-time break to ensure that they are well informed to make the decision to give you the best experience technology can offer.

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