I recently read Isaac’s Storm, a brilliant book by Erik Larson about the storm that swept the shores of Galveston at the turn of the 20th century. The storm remains perhaps the deadliest storm in history – claiming over 8,000 lives. Since then, meteorologists and scientists have spent centuries understanding weather, and while we can predict - we are yet to understand the root causes of a perfectly devastating storm. The book said, ‘perhaps a butterfly spread its wings,’ causing the slightest stir in the delicate wind-equilibrium, resulting in the birth of catastrophic wind speeds and tornadoes.
In our case, we are chasing the butterflies. If the right butterfly spreads its wings, we have the disruptive storm we are all hoping for. The eye – the core – the center – sets the course for our disruptive innovation in the IT services industry. We have spent the last several weeks and months now in building winds around our core.
We get that innovation is unpredictable – as in it often depends on a butterfly spreading its wings. However, we are opening as many cocoons as possible. Each year, the goal is to create three sustainable storms.
When we launched our initial idea generation efforts, we received a slew of ideas on Gust, ideas that described everything from technology geared to the real estate industry to manufacturing. Given that our core capabilities lie within the strengths of Softtek, we realized the challenges in delivering on a wide array of enterprise software and applications. Hence, we launched an effort to identify our core.
We took a rather top-down approach to identify the eye of the storm but believe that our global associates will provide the winds. Our senior management could perhaps best determine the eye of each storm – identify areas, industries, and general concepts in which we innovate. However, our associates determine the speed and intensity of the storm. Ideas are inspired and flow across the entire organization.
Our ten thought-leaders, regarded as experts in various departments, provided a seemingly incompatible view of Softtek’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. However, sifting through these concepts, we realized core challenges and opportunities facing Softtek. We extracted direction and focus from contrasting opinions, which are binding by an underlying common purpose and theme. (We’ll blog on this interesting process)
Top management, including the Innoventures Board, provide further credibility and strength to our proposed focus. Without the buy-in of key members of Softtek, it would be impossible to force a storm. This team is critical for maintaining speed and momentum as the storm is unleashed with the intent to disrupt and disturb the status quo.
Finally, we engage our wide community of over 8,000 associates in our ‘Idea Generation’ process. This process combines collaboration through social network, physical roadshows, online teaching sessions, and mentorship. Our associates use a corporate network platform to share ideas and successes. Innoventures actively engages with the community with feedback and spurs idea development. We funnel a wide range of ideas through our platform with the hope to open cocoons.
At the end, we cannot predict the intensity of our storm. However, we are making calculated efforts to identify the focus and direction – and hoping to bring sustainable disruption.
