Thought Leaders in Corporate Innovation: Anita Sands, Board Member of ServiceNow and Symantec (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to make a couple of points on what you said. I was talking to Head of Commercial Banking in American Express. She told me that they waited a long time before they got into this micro-lending business which companies like OnDeck and Lending Club are doing. Lending Club is peer-to-peer and OnDeck is working capital loans.

American Express just sat on the sidelines. Then they created their own version of that. That’s going really well. Intuit has done the same thing. They are doing working capital lending with their own money within their own platform. They didn’t buy. They actually built it themselves but they waited for the right time and for the technology to mature. >>>

Thought Leaders in Corporate Innovation: Anita Sands, Board Member of ServiceNow and Symantec (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What have you concluded, through your various assignments, in terms of process? What processes have worked for you? What are examples of best practices?

Anita Sands: Let me share two. They’re related. As I look back on all of the various processes that we put in place to try and work through innovation, from ideation right through to end-to-end execution, was that innovation really works for large companies at the perfect intersection of three things. I used to describe it as a three-legged stool. If one of the legs is shorter, then things would topple over.

First of all, there needs to be a market need. There needs to be a customer need for the problem. The second is there has to be a >>>

Thought Leaders in Corporate Innovation: Anita Sands, Board Member of ServiceNow and Symantec (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What you said reminds me of an anecdote. We have a close relationship with Intuit. This is probably a few years ago. Snapchat was incredibly hot then. I was talking to the Chief Innovation Officer of Intuit. He said, “In our innovation program, a project like that came up. We chose not to pursue it.” I said, “Why are you saying this as if you regret that? You made the right decision.” Snapchat or equivalent should not be part of Intuit’s innovation agenda. It’s contextually irrelevant.

Anita Sands: That’s right. Just because something is possible doesn’t mean that you should pursue it. I actually found it was very important to bring people on to the same page relative to what innovation is and isn’t in a given firm. My working definition >>>

Thought Leaders in Corporate Innovation: Anita Sands, Board Member of ServiceNow and Symantec (Part 1)

In this interview, Anita Sands discusses Corporate Innovation as it pertains to large enterprises experiencing disruptive change as well as some experiencing hyper growth. She has perspective on both, and generously shares her thoughts.

Sramana Mitra: Anita, you have spent the first part of your career being a physicist. That’s a really interesting training ground for someone who went on to be in the innovation ecosystem. Would you actually tell me a few things about your journey as a physicist and how that ties into where you are today in the innovation ecosystem?

Anita Sands: As you rightly said, I started as a physicist. My undergraduate was in Physics and Applied Mathematics. My Ph.D. >>>

195th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Anita Sands, Board Member, ServiceNow and Symantec, On Corporate Innovation

Anita Sands, Board Director at Symantec and ServiceNow, talks about corporate innovation as it pertains to large enterprises experiencing disruptive change, as well as some experiencing hyper growth. Anita has perspective on both, and generously shares her thoughts.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | RSS

5 Thought Leaders Discuss Corporate Innovation in Podcasts

For several years, I’ve been working with some corporate partners that want their whole organization to have at least an opportunity to participate in innovation. Part of this is driven by the fact that today, the words innovation and entrepreneurship are so catchy and so pervasive in corporate societies that part of the job attractiveness is dependent on how much people can participate in different types innovation, incubation, or intrapreneurship programs. Many companies want to provide opportunities for their employees to apply themselves in this direction. If everybody is submitting ideas, however, a process and a framework are needed to collect and vet those ideas. Which ideas get developed further? Which ones get resources? Have a listen to my recent conversations on corporate innovation strategies with the thought leaders of some major corporations shared as 30-minute podcasts.

>>>

What is the Incubator-In-A-Box?

Here Sramana Mitra explains our Incubator-In-A-Box (IIAB) program for which we’re seeing very significant interest right now. IIAB is our core partnership platform.

Thought Leaders in Corporate Innovation: Paolo Juvara, Group Vice President, Oracle Applications Lab (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: One point we should probably highlight is the intellectual property issue. When you are going through the One Million by One Million program on your own, you own the intellectual property.

Of course, this is an Oracle program. It’s a very reasonable conclusion that the intellectual property belongs to Oracle. For everyone who’s learning the One Million by One Million methodology and coming up with an idea through this process, the intellectual property belongs to Oracle.

Paolo Juvara: Absolutely. It’s an Oracle-sponsored program. Having said that, people also learn skills. There’s also an employee >>>