Innovation Inside Corporations

Some of the greatest innovations in technology come out of large, powerful corporations. You just can’t match the resources of those organizations in terms of money and technical prowess. The question this session tried to answer was how to get involved in the innovation within a large corporation, where it seems so easy to get lost. We heard from a panel of innovators from Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Cisco, and Intel, who shared all kinds of stories, information and advice for how to get your ideas recognized, funded, and adopted withing such corporations.

This panel was full of advice that I think would be incredibly valuable both within large companies as well as in other environments (like academia!). Some of the takeaways from the session:

Make sure you pitch an idea in an articulate way.
Engage a champion for that idea at the management level and get help to drum up support.
Make sure you understand the official (and unofficial) process very well.
The meeting doesn’t happen at the meeting. Talk to the decision makers ahead of time and pitch your ideas. Sometimes you only get one chance.
Find somebody at a more senior rank that you are helping with your idea, whose interests align with yours.
Make sure you are persistent, sometimes the timing just isn’t right.
Feeling uncomfortable is a good sign.. you are pushing through to the next level.
You may want to practice pitching ideas.
Don’e be afraid to ignore standard processes if they aren’t working for you…. don’t limit yourself to convention.

I must say I found this panel to be very inspirational, because I think we as technologists tend to be very innovative, and it’s great to hear about successful women who can talk about the fact that there are always bumps along the way. I also enjoyed hearing about the many processes and programs in place in these companies to encourage innovation.