Looking for the Source of Innovation
Every 3.5 minutes a new product is introduced, every second, 10 containers are shipped, and a merger and acquisition occurs every 20 minutes.
Given these rates, companies require innovation and agility at a much faster pace. That was the message of SAP CEO Henning Kagermann at Sapphire, the company’s customer and partner conference held in Atlanta.
Kagermann said in order to compete in this rapidly changing world, companies must effectively collaborate with their business networks including employees, suppliers, customers, partners, and distributors. When organizations properly develop these relationships they successfully differentiate themselves from competitors.
“No longer can companies go at it alone,” he said. Change is happening at an accelerated pace and every company needs to cultivate a network of business partners to cope with the speed of change in business.”
Kagermann asked the question: “How can we innovate?” If you want to be different, he said, before you automate you have to differentiate. SAP is relying on Web 2.0 technologies and SOA to deliver that innovation—not only to its customers, but to SAP’s own employees and partners.
One example is the launch of Harmony, a site where SAP employees publish their skills so that coworkers can get their questions answered and know where to turn for area expertise. Another one called Customer Connect is a social business networking service that allows user groups to connect through communities.
Yes, SAP is right in saying that to innovate requires first the ability to combine business network transformation with enterprise SOA. But what constitutes innovation is difficult to pinpoint.
In his 1985 book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Peter Drucker lists seven sources for organizations to search for innovation and they are all symptoms of change:
• The unexpected success that is gratefully received but rarely dissected to see why it occurred.
• The incongruity between what actually happens and what was supposed to happen.
• The inadequacy in an underlying process that is taken for granted.
• The changes in industry or market structure that catch everyone by surprise.
• The demographic changes caused by wars, medical improvements and even superstition.
• The changes in perception, mood and fashion brought on by the ups and downs of the economy.
• The changes in awareness caused by new knowledge.
Kagermann is correct in saying that businesses must become more agile for innovation to occur, but innovation stems from other sources as well.
How do you define innovation?
