Jim Stikeleather, Chief Innovation Officer at Dell Services, discusses the common myth that you have to be creative and egotistical to be innovative.

Debunking the Myths of Innovation

Myth 3: You have to be creative (egotistical) to be innovative

Reality 3: While creative thinking is helpful, innovation is a systematic discipline

Typically, “innovation” is viewed as something that occurs in the minds of a select few who really understand what it means and who know how to make it happen. While people responsible for innovation talk about collaboration, co-creation, and open innovation, we historically have tended to engage with this dynamic as the conductor who has the authority to make the final decision. Truly engaging in open innovation means that the “innovation elites” will increasingly have to relinquish some of our personal authority.

Instead, we must become extremely open to the fact that others may have better ideas than we do. Initially, as internal innovators, we need to be the ones at the forefront, working relentlessly to prove the case in environments that may not be open to new ideas and approaches. When it comes to making innovation a sustainable value within a large organisation, we absolutely must spread our expertise and be thoughtful and generous in how we encourage others to become innovators, too. We must look beyond your own needs and egos, and we must diligently spread the word and support others to create a pervasive population of innovators.

Dell currently operates two internal innovation systems:

· IdeaStorm allows customers to submit ideas for new products, services or improvements to existing options. Through this process, Dell customers have contributed 15,559 ideas, submitted 741,950 evaluations and offered 91,815 comments on those ideas. Dell has implemented 438 of those ideas.

· EmployeeStorm is a venue that encourages employees to do the same. To date, Dell employees have contributed 5,778 ideas, submitted 301,993 evaluations and 25,350 comments on those ideas. Dell has implemented 269 ideas based directly on employee submissions.

The Services Innovation Group intends to add on to these capabilities as we evolve and develop a more systemic and directed approach to innovation.

In implementing systemic innovation, our responsibility is to ignite waves of action, to basically function as an incubator that gives good ideas a reasonable chance to succeed and ultimately, perhaps even make the formal Services Innovation Group obsolete. Innovation can and should simply become the way business is done. In the past innovation was nice to have, especially when product cycles were long, markets took time to develop and IT was driven by business and not consumers. Today, innovation is necessary to survive and daily business articles appear (not just in technology) with the theme “Innovate or Die”.

Dell has multiple groups engaged in an innovation framework, identifying trends and values, futuristic market themes and scenarios of possible futures, all of which are then translated into formal investigations (what needs more research), plans of intent (strategies in terms of products and services to be developed), plans of record (actual product and services under development), as well as long-range and tactical operating plans and budgets. This is an iterative and cooperative process, and the Services Innovation Group and innovation process is primarily looking at the world three years ahead.

In contrast, several Dell CTOs, with respective responsibilities for enterprise customers/offers, clients (hardware) and industry verticals (such as healthcare), have a more near-term charter to use emerging technologies to improve existing products and services. Dell Product Groups perform product marketing and product management functions, including IT services. Finally, Dell delivery organisations actually produce and deliver the company’s products, services and comprehensive solutions.

A formal, repeatable and systemic innovation process inside Dell is a work in progress as it is in most large organizations with very few exceptions. Currently, innovation across the above-mentioned groups is informal and collaborative. Even the term innovation itself is inconsistently used, misused and not well understood – industry and business have only just begun to coalesce around a common understanding of innovation and its manifestations.

Each group has its own interactions with outside researchers, analysts, standards groups and even customer interactions to form their own perception of the environment and then come together to rationalise differences that emerge. Each group also independently engages various consulting organisations to conduct primary research and facilitate analysis in their specific areas of interest. In order to evolve to a formal and systemic innovation process, it is essential for businesses to have an integrative approach across the different work groups within the company. That is the future for innovation at Dell.