On September 19th, we hosted 2017 Zhangjiang MNC Open Innovation Forum at XNode Zhangjiang Space @VΠ NAXIAN 800. This event was held in line with this year's China Debuts 'Mass Entrepreneurship, Innovation Week', reflecting the theme of “Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Gathering New Development Momentum”. Without further ado, allow us to bring you through the flow of yesterday’s event.
We were honored to have Shanghai Pudong New District Deputy Head Ms Wang Jing(王靖) to grace the event. During her opening speech, she touched on the current innovation climate in ZhangJiang and goverment's future plans in making the region the highlight of innovation in China. The Pudong New District government warmly welcomes all enterprises and institutions, local and abroad, come to Zhangjiang for communal growth and foster creativity. We also invited Mr Wesley Luo, VP and GM of Honeywell Technology Solutions China and Mr Kapil Kane, Intel China Director of Innovation to share their thoughts on Corporate Innovation.
Mr Luo from Honeywell shared on how the recent wave of innovation have generated new collaboration opportunities and created sweet success for the company. Intel’s Mr Kane from Intel shed some light on cultivating innovation within the enterprise through the use of an innovation “garage”. This was followed by a panel discussion with all experts in the field of corporate innovation.
Questions raised during the panel discussion range from the definition of Corporate Innovation to its measurement of success to the key takeaways on Corporate Innovation. Honey, well...If you are wondering what their response were, we got it all summarised for you. (You’re welcome)
Now, to the serious business…
Well, sorry to disappoint, there’s no ONE definition for it.
It differs across Corporations due to the varying objectives and needs to be fulfilled. However, here are some tips on defining Corporate Innovation:
Corporates should be very clear on what do they want to achieve? How are they going to achieve that with the help of startups?
Teams should have a common understanding of corporate innovation to ensure that everyone is working towards the same objectives.
Realistically, most (if not all) Corporations are profit-driven. Hence corporate innovation should at least deliver a business impact and not be carried out solely for non-profit purposes.
Are they actually creating new revenue streams for the company? If they are, is it in line with the goals set by the company? What is the ROI?
Have employees become more entrepreneurial in nature? Have they become more open in sharing and providing more creative insights and innovative suggestions?
KPIs should be consistently evaluated and changed accordingly with the project’s progress. As a start-up grow, their objectives, product will also be evolving. Hence, it would not be logical to use the same KPIs for every stage of the development.
Startups and corporates are completely different animals! They literally speak two different languages. Startup is a major stakeholder in this industry too! There should exist an external methodology to help startups integrate with corporates so as to attain a desired outcome. Of course, this requires plenty of systematic thinking, knowledge, and push.
Companies should seek to have both top-down and bottom-up approach, with a clear objective and direction for the team. Creating an innovative platform, open-software platform for instance, assists both internal and external innovation.
Starts small, do not be overly ambitious. Resist the temptation to Ctrl C & Ctrl V (Even for apples, they are not all the same!). Avoid doing things the “corporate-way”. This is a common pitfall amongst corporates these day. I urge corporates to explore and learn about the lean startup approach, and start to view things from a customer-centric way.
Clarity. What is your purpose? Innovate with a purpose. Agility. Secondly, corporates and startups have to realise that agility is the key for success in any field. Lastly, humility - which simply means you ought to know what you don’t.
And of course, what better way to engage the crowd by having a live poll to gather consensus about Corporate Innovation! Out of 99 survey participants, we managed to unearth some interesting findings…
Surprisingly (or not), approximately equal proportion of startups and corporates participated in our survey. This draws a large mutual interest between the two parties. Such traction is further amplified by the fact that all startups present were unanimous in their willingness to engage with Corporations while 98% of the latter also echoed the same sentiments.
XNode has always been committed to be the bridge between corporates and startups, by providing them with right network resources and platforms to integrate. We enable corporates both innovate internally and externally, function and think like a startup. This is a win-win situation as corporates get to accelerate their pace of open innovation while startups get to tap on valuable networks and resources from renowned MNCs.
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