| | May 20169CIOReviewFail Fast and OftenHowever, while becoming a physical part the innovation landscape is necessary, it is not sufficient. To truly catalyze innovation, a company must embrace the proper mindset--which means embracing failure.Being afraid of failure is a huge deterrent to innovation. While this policy keeps success rates high, it also discourages potentially game-changing ideas. Kodak is a good example. In 1976, Kodak sold 85 percent of cameras and 90 percent of film in the United States. But in 2012, Kodak had filed for bankruptcy--having failed to seize the digital photography opportunity. Ironically, digital photography was actually invented by a Kodak employee, Steven Sassoon. Sassoon told the New York Times in 2008, "... it was filmless photography, so management's reaction was, `that's cute--but don't tell anyone about it."Rather than fearing failure, it is crucial for companies to reframe it as an opportunity to learn, adapt, improve--and potentially find their next million or billion-dollar product.To show your team that you are committed to this new attitude, reward employees that take risks whether or not those risks pay off.For example, in 2005 Intuit started a new site called RockYourRefund.com targeting young tax-payers. The site generated very little business; however, a couple months later, the employees were honored by the chairman of Intuit's board as recognition of trying something new. Experimentation and ValidationTraditionally, corporations spend a far longer time bringing products to market than startups do. Corporations are focused on nailing down every strategic detail and perfecting every last feature. Yet along the way, they are missing countless opportunities to see if a need or desire for the product actually exists.Big busi-nesses need to imitate the "lean methodology" that is so popular among startups today. This meth-odology advocates constantly running tests to see whether a product is viable.You can also see this technique at work within Ericsson. Recently, the BUSS department at Ericsson was discussing the scaling potential for a new solution, instead the department switched its focus to finding and running the experiments necessary to see whether or not it could execute the solution at all. Ultimately, modern technologies have scaling in their DNA but it is important to run tests on a small scale to identify product- market fit.PartnershipsForming strategic partnerships is another important component to fostering innovation. These partnerships allow the participants to leverage their combined assets to find and sponsor cutting-edge technologies.According to Accenture, digital collaboration between large and small businesses is a $1.5 trillion growth opportunity, equivalent to 2.2 percent of global GDP.In Silicon Valley, where there is a greater density of technology companies and specialists than anywhere else in the form, partnership opportunities abound.For these reasons, Ericsson has chosen to become involved with Plug and Play, a global innovation platform headquartered in Silicon Valley that has helped more than 2,000 startups raise a cumulative $3.5 billion since 2006. Together, Ericsson and Plug and Play have hosted media and mobile startup expos and meet-ups.Ericsson has also invested in AT&T Foundry's innovation centers. These collaborative and quick-moving environments bring together founders, entrepreneurs, scholars, and inventors and have launched more than 200 products to date.Collaborations dedicated to a specific mission are another good option for corporations seeking to spur innovation. For example, Ericsson has joined forces with Facebook to build the Innovation Lab on Facebook's Menlo Park campus. The lab will enable developers to develop applications that work across multiple networks--ultimately helping the next five billion people to use the Internet.Spin-ins and strategic partnerships are yet another mechanism incumbent can use to "own" innovation, while avoiding the inflexible processes innate to large companies. While established ways of doing things are crucial to keeping multinational companies organized, they also make it very difficult to "move fast and break things." Hiring the right people, receiving a budget, determining project structure and objectives--all of these tasks take far longer to do as an official branch of the company than an autonomous group. Yet with startups and external groups supplying the agility needed for innovation, large companies can apply the resources, years of expertise, and eventual scaling mechanisms for innovation. Being afraid of failure is a huge deterrent to innovation"
< Page 8 | Page 10 >