Innovation High-Five

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This is a guest post by Tim Kippley, Geneca Vice President, Account Strategy and Growth.  In this post, Tim Kippley Tim shares one of the experiments Geneca is running to give its people opportunities to explore new ideas. So far, so good.  It is a journey and I hope we can follow Geneca's path of experimenting-learning-applying-iterating and learn for ourselves. 

By Tim Kippley:

Jeff Bezos, one of the planet’s greatest innovators, once said that: “You need a culture that high-fives small and innovative ideas and senior executives [that] encourage ideas.” 

The Value of Innovation at Geneca 

I have long felt that companies can’t survive without innovating. Fortunately, I work at an organization (a custom software development firm) that also views innovation as basic to our growth:

  • It reinforces our company culture and promotes deeper Genecian engagement;
  • It enhances our brand by allowing us to do more good within our communities and deliver more value to our clients;
  • It improves the ability of our recruiting team to attract creative, out-of-the-box thinkers;
  • And it drives growth by generating ideas that require new capabilities with the potential to create additional sources of revenue, whether direct or indirect.    

During 2012, creating a process for internal innovation moved to our priority list. Because the culture at Geneca encourages personal and professional development and there was buy-in from the leadership team, the preconditions for innovation already were in place.   

The Innovation Group is Born

The innovation initiative was born from our Organizational Growth Team, a cross-functional internal team formed in 2011 to focus on investing in Genecians, evolving our capabilities, and predictably delivering value to clients.

Early in 2012, the team created ideas to impact each of these areas and voted on innovation as the common denominator.  The team then hosted a brainstorming event with the entire company on how to encourage innovation at Geneca.  From this we developed an action plan for the year, starting with the development of a charter statement for our new innovation initiative:  

Innovation Charter: The innovation initiative is to foster a culture of innovation, creativity, and teamwork within Geneca.  Geneca’s pledge is to support this initiative in the form of time (e.g. providing time-codes to track innovation work), environment (e.g. space and tools that help drive innovation), and mindset (e.g. encourage Genecians to change the physics and challenge the perceived norms)

Our next step was kicking off our first Innovation Challenge.

The First Geneca Innovation Challenge

Shark Tank Winner, Jack Morrissey and Tim. Winning Idea is GRITThe first Geneca Innovation Challenge was divided into two events, an Innovation Meet-up followed by an innovation “Shark Tank” event for finalists.

The Meet-up was modeled after "Startup Weekend," the global grassroots for active entrepreneurs looking for feedback, knowledge, and support to launch successful ventures.  Each of the 15 participating Genecians had about 3 minutes to pitch their idea.  Each attendee had five votes to use on one or more of the ideas.  Although we did not specify the number of finalists, six finalists clearly emerged. 

There were no specific criteria posted for this event – purposefully.  We wanted this event to ignite enthusiasm and increase overall engagement within Geneca.  We wanted people to use their own criteria in voting for the ideas that they thought were the coolest, most fun and engaging, even if the idea had nothing to do with our business.

From social media tools to business process gamification to digital wallets, we received over a dozen great ideas.  Six innovations moved on to the Shark Tank:

  • Internal recognition and award tracking system called  GRIT (Geneca Recognition Instilment Tool);
  • iPhone app for drinking establishments to scan and detect alcohols level according to bottle size; 
  • GPS augmented reality game;
  • CrowdLunching application for local lunch deliveries; 
  • Online tool to retrieve documents and track changes for project documents;
  • Digital wallet with QR payments.     

Once in the Shark Tank, the requirements become more specific.

Bring in the Shark Tank

Geneca’s executive team met to discuss the objectives and criteria for the Shark Tank.  We made a clear decision to emphasize the positive aspects of each presentation and to encourage the finalists to continue working on their ideas.  We also told those not selected that it wasn't the end of Geneca's support -- they would continue to receive help and coaching if they wanted to further develop their ideas.  They had the option to resubmit at the next innovation event.

Next, the executive team defined the criteria for evaluating the ideas:

  • Is the idea cool, fun, and/or does it provide learning opportunities for Genecians?
  • What is the potential for monetizing the idea?  If not, are there nontangible benefits to Geneca?
  • Does this support/enhance the Geneca brand? (If not, it must be higher on the monetization side)
  • What is the overhead (cost of support/resources)?

After the criteria was defined, the Innovation Team met with each finalist individually to discuss the highlights of their idea and business plan.  Each finalist was expected to cover the following areas during their presentation: 

  • Business Description (including the walk-thru /"day in the life" of the idea, etc.)
  • Market Analysis and Customers
  • Competitive Landscape
  • The Company
  • Marketing Strategy
  • Sales Strategy
  • Financial Projections – including cost to develop/build
  • Operational Strategy
  • Mgmt. / Ownership

The executive team conducted multiple one-on-one sessions with the finalists, coaching them on their business plan.  One unforeseen benefit was that each finalist really got the opportunity to learn what’s involved in developing a business and gained an appreciation for the strategic effort that goes into growing an idea into a business.  Not only did each finalist feel that this was a really positive experience, the excitement spread within Geneca as well.

And the Winner Is … GRIT  

In order to set expectations, the executive team made it clear that there was a possibility that we would choose none of the ideas -- or at most just one.

That said, the executive team selected one idea to support and develop, an internal recognition tracking application called GRIT.  GRIT was clearly strong on fun, cool, and learning.  Plus, it did a great job supporting Geneca’s brand and core value of giving and receiving feedback. 

What’s Next for the Geneca Innovation Group

As the group matures, we hope to get more Genecians involved from all areas of the organization.  Maybe someone on the marketing team can help the innovator come up with a marketing plan; our financial folks can help the innovator create a Proforma; etc.

As we become more innovative in how we think about our innovation process, we plan to make small adjustments to the ideation and evaluation process.  We’ve already discussed alternating between entirely "open" ideation and more guided innovation challenges directly aligned with Geneca's brand. 

We also intend to continue our discussion of providing support for ideas not directly aligned with Geneca by developing partnerships with incubators in Chicago. We’d look to the incubator to further sponsor ideas originating from Genecians.  Additional support turning great ideas into actual products can play a big part in strengthening our innovation engine.

Based on the energy surrounding our first Shark Tank, we’re all excited about the prospect of creating a sustainable structure that gives us a way to support and reward innovation within Geneca.

The Slippery Slope of Not Asking Why

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Guest post at Switch and Shift - 

Thank you Shawn Murphy & Ted Coine for the opportunity

I’d like to think I’m good at challenging the status quo.  To get regular reality checks, I spend time with college kids creating for-profit and not-for-profit businesses aimed at solving wicked problems.  They truly challenge the status quo and it is, fortunately, invigoratingly contagious.

Sometimes (most of the time?), the status quo is so deeply engrained we don’t realize it – so deeply inherent in our worldview that when confronted with it, we view questioning it as heretical.  This hit home in the span of less than a week when 4 separate ‘events’ screamed Status Quo Alert at me:

  1. In finishing Raj Patel’s, The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy, one of our society and economy’s basic assumptions, the concept of private property, is challenged. Raj’s thesis is that the privatizing/enclosing of public/open spaces turned labor from being production for oneself to being an asset (human capital) for someone else. So, Why don’t we question if this concept still works in its current form, if it couldn’t be adapted to a new model, and what the consequences have been?
  2. The fledgling entrepreneurs, social and ‘regular’ (for lack of a better word; I actually think it’s all social), I met during my “office hours” were trying to truly understand customers’ needs from the customers’ worldview – with their constraints, incomes, barriers and opportunities – instead of from the students’ perspective of ‘what’ these people might need.  So, Why do we assume that we know what’s best, that the way we view the world is either the ‘right’ way or the ‘best’ way?
  3. My weekly article ‘catch-up’ included several on corporate culture and leadership that were all just common sense and the Golden Rule.  So, Why do we have to elevate basic decency in how we treat one another to great rules for leadership?  Has it gotten so bad that widely respected journals publish posts telling us to say thank you to employees, to behave consistently, to smile because it’s contagious? Where was I when these fundamentals of human kindness became leadership virtues?
  4. The ECB (European Central Bank) released its study of Bitcoin, a virtual currency and actually said, “The theoretical roots of Bitcoin can be found in the Austrian [sic] (Menger, Mises, Hayek) school of economics,” (pg. 22)!  Then they proceeded to say why Bitcoin, and its ilk, would never work

My husband tells me I ask Why too often.  Why is how we learn, discover, and challenge the Status Quo.  In one of my first projects at Bell Labs, I was the system engineer on three different messaging services. Why did I have to create three different architectures for three different messaging services?  Ok, the media were different (voice, text, image) but simply tagging the media type in a header all the services understood meant one architecture, shared messages, and media conversion as necessary! Voila! Done and on to the next project! Result? Big revenues for AT&T and my patent on a plaque for me.

Kids ask Why all the time and we expect that from them.  At some point, it seems we stop questioning and expecting Whys. When we stop asking Why, we risk the Status Quo becoming so entrenched that we accept it as the way it Has to be and can Only be.  So, this next week, try to ask Why just two times a day – give it a whirl and see what happens.  Next week, ask your team to ask Why twice a day and see what happens.  And the week after? You know the drill!