We have close to 100 ideas flowing through Innoventures. I say flowing because I find the tides changing with every passing week. Our Idea Submission phase asked our participants to present us with nothing but an idea. In the past four weeks alone, some ideas were born within the Innoventures framework – some morphed to meet specific market challenges - while some others developed into strong business cases.
Our incubation program, which I often refer to as a pre-accelerator, provides a hands-on learning experience to understand the basics of launching new ventures. At the end, our participants receive an Intrapreneurship Certificate. In the process of ‘teaching’ customer problems and market analysis, our associates are also improved versions of themselves at their existing positions. Although that wasn’t our original intent, the program is giving birth to a set of talents allowing associates to size up, measure, and deliver on most business activities.
This year, all our ideas fall into the general bucket of Enterprise Software. Ideas range from making day-to-day business operations smoother to developing sincere solutions for BYOD or mobile security challenges. And, then, we have some that are completely disruptive. For many of our ideas, Softtek is the first customer. That works out very nicely. In the next stage, the bootcamp, we expect to employ Lean Startup methods to work directly with Softtek to experiment and improvise.
As Innoventures, I don’t think that we can have clarity on where we will ultimately find success. We are also in the stage of understanding how to structure sales and marketing to support a new direction for Softtek. We don’t have a defined path for each new venture to co-exist with the current framework. In the regards, we, too, are in the process of figuring things out. What we do have is a general willingness to make this work – from the decision makers for Softtek to the individuals who lead the various departments and business units. All in all, we’re in a roll. Everything is somehow coming together.
