Thought Leaders in Corporate Innovation: Max Wessel, General Manager of SAP.io (Part 1)

This interview explores the nuances of SAP’s Corporate Incubation strategy in great depth.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about what SAP’s thinking is in the domain of corporate innovation. What are your goals, activities, strategies and structure? Let’s dig into the programs.

Max Wessel: Let me start off with the high level description of what SAP is for those who are not familiar with the organization. SAP is Europe’s largest software company. We also happen to be the largest enterprise applications business in >>>

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John Deschner, Chief Innovation Officer\Managing Director at TBWA\Chiat\Day discusses the Corporate Innovation strategy of his advertising agency.

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PaaS: SaaS Companies, You Have an Unprecedented Opportunity

The current market is full of really interesting SaaS companies that have built up at least $100M in annual revenue run rate (ARR). Some have gone public. Some are waiting in the wings. There are also many more that are in the $50M to $100M ARR range.

They serve different segments. Some serve verticals. Some horizontal enterprise functions. Some large niches. Some enterprises. Some mid-market. Some SME.

Together, the SaaS market is a healthy, robust, exciting cauldron of innovation.

Unlike Social Media, Search or e-Commerce, SaaS is not an oligopoly. [ref: An Oligopoly, After All This?]

And these SaaS companies that have achieved critical mass in their own segments now have an unprecedented opportunity of scaling to become much larger businesses by broadening their footprints.

They can look within, and look outside to identify the growth levers.

Let me explain.

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224th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Maxwell Wessel, SAP.IO, on Corporate Innovation

Maxwell Wessel, General Manager of SAP.IO, talks about SAP’s Corporate Incubation strategy.

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Corporate Innovation: Tyranny of the TAM is Less Severe

What are the Biggest Challenges Facing Innovation Managers at Enterprises?

Must-Read Posts on Corporate Innovation

Anyone involved in a corporate innovation program soon learns that it is quite complex to manage the nuances of such programs and get them to work right.

Last year I spent half a day with approximately 40 Fortune 500 Chief Innovation Officers at Xerox PARC, and discussed our experience with corporate innovation methodology through the1M/1M Incubator In A Box program. A few months later, Jim Euchner, the CIO of Goodyear, interviewed me for the Research-Technology Management journal.
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Corporate Innovation Management: Lessons Learned

Last summer I spent half a day with approximately 40 Fortune 500 Chief Innovation Officers at Xerox PARC, and discussed our experience with corporate innovation methodology through the1M/1M Incubator In A Box program.

A few months later, Jim Euchner, the CIO of Goodyear, interviewed me for the Research-Technology Management journal and I summarized some key excerpts from the discussion here: Corporate Innovation Management: A Methodology Discussion
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Corporate Innovation Management: Organizational Challenges

Continuing with our discussion on corporate innovation methodology, in this piece, I want to highlight a couple of key organizational challenges: (1) How do ideas flow into execution, (2) Where are the push backs?

Let me call out another specific point from my previous article, Corporate Innovation Management – A Methodology Discussion, that addresses the first issue.

In my interview with Jim Euchner for the Research-Technology Management journal, I said:

JE: Are these same people, if it’s a go, charged with trying to make it work?

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Corporate Innovation Management: Unstructured Time

Google became a pioneer in the domain of corporate innovation some years ago by introducing the notion of 20% unstructured time in which employees could work on whatever they wanted.

Other large enterprises followed along, and started experimenting with their own interpretations of unstructured time.

Most came to the conclusion, including Google itself, that completely unstructured time is not productive, and does not yield innovative ideas or projects.
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