Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Innovation is all about Execution - The case of Votizen

In today's world of greater citizen voices, I find the innovation process of Votizen well explicited in the presentation below, and useful for any CEO or company leader.


Indeed the innovation didn't stop a the "idea of Votizen", rather it evolved as mini-lessons were learned through the process of execution.


The new buzzword in Silicon Valley these days is "Pivot", i.e. the core of the innovation and the abiliy to rotate the innovation in different directions as mini-lessons prove successes or failures. In other words, if the initial idea for which the innovation was intended is not working out, at least, there are other alternative paths that can be taken to make the company succeed. Indeed many startups and companies did succeed with an intent different than originally anticipated.


In the end, it is all about execution. And the successful iteration process of learning from each execution step. In the not-so-distant-days, it was called "The Learning Curve".


This process is easier to drive in startups as they have no choice. It is the survival instinct. No money, innovate, learn, or die.

In medium and large companies, a complencency settles as employees do not have that survival instinct. So the CEO must do much heavier lifting to get his teamates to "incrementally improve the innovation & learn from it". The CEO finds it useful to bring in outside consultants asnew blood to drive that process. That type of talent is best when it comes from the entrepreneurial and startup environment, but is aware of constraints in an existing business.