Co-innovation – It Takes Two To Tango


People who have known me for a while know that I am a big fan of co-innovating with an ecosystem. I have worked in a number of co-innovation projects in my career with varying degrees of success. And now I am in India for 3 weeks, working with a number of ecosystem partners to explore co-innovation ideas.

Why should anyone co-innovate in the first place?

To begin with – innovation is a misused and overhyped word. I am of the firm opinion that a vendor should not claim innovation on any product or service – only a customer should. I am in two minds these days on whether analysts and bloggers are good judges of innovation. But till I get some clarity of thought, I am going to stick with customers as the sole judge.

But Vendors have to constantly try to innovate – otherwise they will not stay relevant to their customers. Relevance comes in two parts – protecting the investments customers made already, and coming up with new things that solve the ever changing needs of customers in a global economy. It is a hard balance to strike, to say the least.

One reason for this balance being hard to strike is because vendor solutions are not always outcome based. Almost every customer has budget to make more money – be it revenue increases or cost reductions. But not all vendors and customers can articulate IT solutions in the context of a business solution. It is an in-exact science to begin with – since some assumptions have to be made . And in a dynamic business world – you can never guess all the factors that affect an outcome. So vendors are naturally hesitant to tie their sales to an outcome that they don’t have control over. Not just vendors – I have also seen several customers who are hesitant to tie their purchases to a risk/reward model. I guess it will be a while before outcome based contracts become mainstream if at all.

Yet another reason is that no one vendor can provide all the solutions to a customer , although many vendors apparently want to do so. Customers also typically like a “one throat to choke” model – which these days seem to be called a more politically correct “one hand to shake”. A happy medium is where co-innovation comes in. It can have many flavors – with multiple vendors joining in , and some times (sadly not often enough)  with customers directly playing a part.

This is a scalable model – since for a given budget constraint, every vendor can get more bang out of their buck, and the customers get a comprehensive solution. But it takes a lot to make it successful. More than the legal, IP, cost etc type of issues – it is the personality of the people that actually work on these projects that make a difference. Co-innovation projects need people who work for different employers to trust each other a lot. This is easier said than done .

There is another conflict of interest in such solutions. Vendors will need a solution that they can lift and shift to other customers . That will typically mean – some features specific to the given customer they are working with might not fit a “framework” ,model. Customers on the other hand will want an out of the box solution that they don’t need to customize any more. I am sympathetic to both sides – and whether this gets resolved or not depends on the trust the people on all sides have with each other, and very seldom does it depend on the contracts that are in place. In fact if contracts have to be referred to every step of the way – I won’t hold my breath on co-innovation projects succeeding ever.

Then there are co-innovation (allegedly?) projects which have little to no customer participation. This is the beginning of the “solution looking for a problem” type scenes we have all seen. In my opinion, such projects should not be done – just scratch them off. They may succeed on occasion – but they are not scalable.

And then there are the “influencers” – analysts, bloggers, friends and family etc. They provide extremely valuable information on co-innovation projects. The hard part is to negate their bias. Every influencer has a bias – some might want you to maximize short term revenue (hi mom) , others might claim they are “buy side”, except they make vast majority of their income from vendors, yet others might only know one geography or market where you sell and so on. So unless you balance it out – there is a good chance that you might end up with a skewed solution. But all things said – I would rather have influencer input than not have it.

I have a lot of battle scars from co-innovation projects – and some of them have not ended well. But I have learned something valuable from each, and I will still be quick to say “I am in” if there is a co-innovation project I can work on . The only ones I say no to are the ones with low or no customer participation.

The Second Question


As many of you have pointed out in private and in public – I have not blogged much since I have joined SAP . Trust me it was not intentional – just that other things like kitchen remodeling , getting used to my new job etc took all my bandwidth. But now that remodeling project is complete , I can get back to more blogging etc .

Any way – my first assignment at SAP is to work with our customers and partners to make sure they realize the value of BW on Hana . Since the day I joined SAP – I have been talking to customers about this, and something interesting became clear to me. So I thought it might be useful to summarize my customer and partner conversations in my blog so that we can have a more extensive conversation virtually .

When Suite runs on Hana , BW runs on Hana and assorted data marts run on Hana – what would be different for a business user ? In my opinion – after talking to several customers – it is the “ease of answering the second question” that is the most value adding scenario for a business user – especially the “business analyst” types.

Let me explain with an example that should resonate with many of the readers here

Analysts live in an ad-hoc world – their “real” work starts when an executive asks them a non routine question like “how many bottles of soda did we sell to top 5 distributors in Arizona last summer and how did we do against plan” . Question is simple enough – but there might not be an easy way to answer this .

Analysts will probably go to BW or CRM to find who their top 5 distributors are , how much was sold to them etc. and then they will probably log on elsewhere to find plan information . Finally, all of that gets dumped to an excel sheet , massaged with various vlookup functions etc and a prettied up table and graph will be presented to the executive . Most probably , one of the sources of information is yet another spreadsheet stored in a share point site.

Now, I have never met an executive who had asked all she wants to know in one question – and that includes me !

So as soon as the first answer comes in – the exec would ask her next question . “Hmm – that is interesting , how is that split across the various brands we sold them ?” .

The best analysts know this and will come with as much info that they can second guess. But that is a limited approach with most executives – invariably , more data dumps and analysis will be needed . And this takes time – hours at a minimum, days to weeks usually .

Now, what would change with Hana ?

For starters – a lot of data sitting in BW can be crunched and compared to spreadsheet data on the fly by the analyst without IT help using workspaces . This can be done without Hana too – if speed is not an issue and patience is over abundant .

BW sitting on Hana can be combined easily with other datamarts modeled directly on Hana via composite providers. So – adhoc queries spanning multiple sources become all the more easy . And of course the front end like BI 4.x Analysis makes this an excel friendly exercise .

Now when suite also works on Hana – and suite has the Hana Analytics Foundation under it – this becomes all the more easy . SHAF is nothing but Hana views that can also understand BW data . And of course it understands BI front end tools . So in effect – data sitting in suite, BW and other Hana datamarts are all available to users without a lot of manual work to make sense of it all .

Back to our analyst friend who got the second question – now he can quickly change the query to include more parameters and respond to the executive much faster than in the pre-Hana world . What is not to like ? 🙂

Of course , Hana does not replace the need to have a good solid BI discipline in place . The right way to look at this in my opinion is to think of how powerful is the scenario of having Hana and a good BI system together than just one or the other (or god forbid, neither).

It is also important to note that suite on hana does not eliminate the need for BW. Neither is it always a good idea to move everything in a BW system to a custom data warehouse even if it sits on Hana . If you are not convinced , try to implement a reporting scenario that is based on an ERP cost center hierarchy with time dependencies directly in Hana and also in BW on Hana . You can see why having these solutions to compliment each other is better than trying to force fit every requirement into one of them .

Now tell me – what is your “second question” I can help with 🙂

Leadership, Management and Gandhi


mahatma-gandhi

Right from my first day at Business School, I have been conditioned to believe that I should not ever aim to be a manager – I should aim to be a leader, an entrepreneur, anything but a manager. What my professors preached to me was reinforced by my bosses at work, and the books I read. And I have faithfully tried to pass along this message to the people who came after me. I have a feeling that most of you – if not all – have a similar story to tell. As I think about it – it is actually hard to draw a clear line between across leadership and management. So take what follows with a pound of salt – not just the proverbial grain.

Any way, in December I resigned from IBM, and took a break before joining SAP. In that break, I watched several movies – one of which was “Gandhi” . When that movie originally came out, I was in primary school I think. And I have watched it at least 50 times. But I have not seen it since I started working. And this time it shook my belief systems quite a bit. Although it was not a planned activity, I also had read a lot about India’s independence movement before I watched the movie. By the time my vacation neared its end, I was firmaly convinced that it is way better to be a leader AND manager, as opposed to just being a leader alone.

When it comes to leadership, Gandhi played in a league that many of us could not even dream about. He influenced and unified a diverse set of millions of people with no formal authority to win India’s independence. And he succeeded and influenced many other leaders – like MLK, Mandela et al. Formidable to say the least. If anything, Gandhi did not take a liking to “management” as we know it, and it did yield exceptional results. India did get rid of British rule, and on friendly terms with Britain.

However, the lack of respect for management did come at a significant price. He definitely had his favorites – like Nehru. Gandhi went out of his way to make sure that Nehru was seen as the foremost leader even when others had better support from the electorate. Subash Chandra Bose walked away from the post of President of Congress – which he won fair and square – because Gandhi wanted Pattabhi Seetaramaiah to be president. Later, Sardar Patel stood down and let Nehru have the Congress President’s job, and the Prime Ministership because Gandhi wanted it that way. This was the whole root cause of Nehru dynasty ruling over India even today.

There was a short term price too – that was significant. Gandhi did not prepare the country for partition and independence. This resulted in widespread loss of life and property. It is not that Gandhi did not know for a while that Jinnah was serious about siding with British for an independent Pakistan. But he let it linger till the last minute. But his inspirational style leadership did not manage to prevent partition. Eventually – it was Gandhi’s leadership ( including his threat to the country that he will fast to death ) and Patel’s managerial abilities that stopped the violence post independence.

Nehru was probably a mix of a manager and a leader – but probably could not find a successful balance between the two. Patel found a better balance than Nehru in my opinion. Patel used his managerial abilities to integrate the various states into one India – except for Jammu and Kashmir, and he could not do that because of Nehru’s inability to decide what is good for the country.

Of course there is a lot more that can be said on leadership vs management in the context of Indian independence movement. I have a few take aways from the movie and the history lessons, to apply to my life in corporate world.

1. Leadership is required to set direction : Gandhi did not start the independence movement. Congress Party was already founded before he even came back to India. But till he came back, there was barely any direction or mass movement to gain independence. Nehru, Patel and others were all already active in the movement and were better managers than leaders. But their impact was felt mostly after Gandhi set the direction.

2. Management is a bigger weapon in crisis prevention : Amply proven by how Sardar Patel integrating the states quickly, and Nehru promoting the 5 year plans. Not everything went smoothly, but things got done – and clearly would not have happened with Gandhi’s type of leadership alone.

3. Disaster recovery needs leadership and management both : as proven clearly by Gandhi’s leadership and Nehru/Patel acting as solid administrators post partition when the country needed both. One or the other clearly would have been less effective.

4. For continuous improvement – leadership is needed to move to next level, and management is needed to keep things running till the new stuff takes hold and becomes the “new normal”.

So in short, if I aim for leadership alone and loathe management – I probably will just be the guy holding a hammer looking for nails everywhere I look. And things will take forever to accomplish. If I aim for management alone – best case, I will at best get to keep things running – maybe with some incremental improvements, but not an awful lot more. So clearly I need to aim for a good balance between leadership and management. But it is a hard balance to strike – so may be the solution is not to strike a balance in me, but rather try to strike a balance across a whole team. I need to think about that .

Well there is one more thing I am taking away – the need to take more vacations and watch more movies and read more movies 🙂