CREATING REAL IMPACT WITH CORPORATE INNOVATION IN CHINA

XNode, as the conference partner of CES Asia, held a Corporation innovation Roundtable at CES Asia. The roundtable forum invited Zhou Wei, Founder and CEO of XNode, Kapil Kane, Director of Innovation at Intel China, Olivier Marescq, Senior Project Manager at Pernod Ricard China and Holly Yuan, Chief Operating Officer of SAP Labs China to discuss how corporations can ignite innovation in their companies.

To corporations, what exactly is innovation? Is it a novel business model or a wave of new technological change? Perhaps even explosive profit growth? Zhou Wei believes that these are but just the corners of innovation: “There are many examples of results brought about by innovation, and people consider these that bring about positive influence as innovation. However, what is at the core of innovation? I believe it is the human factor. In corporations, the crux of innovation is the ability to tap on the most suitable people to continue to innovate and the trend today in companies is open innovation.”

How do we achieve open innovation?

Kapil talked about how Ideas2Reality is enabling & empowering employees of Intel to be Intrapreneurs (entrepreneurs inside of a large organization) by embracing Lean Startup mindset. He stressed that innovation is all about execution, pushing the boundaries and bending the rules. To innovate you don’t need to invent something new. You can use existing things and use them in novel ways to create value for your customers. He ended by saying that innovation is a journey, not a destination. So don’t get bogged down by the end results, just enjoy the ride!

The success of innovation and entrepreneurship within corporates is the result of the interaction between companies and employees. The team needs to have an intense passion for innovation and entrepreneurship, be able to take the ownership and at the same time, have the ability to rapidly learn, iterate, meet challenges and adapt to changes. As a corporate, what we can and need to do is to provide the team with the proper culture, support and inventive mechanism that is suitable to promote innovation. This is to encourage willing employees to rely on the platform provided by the company to access targeted entrepreneurial training, tutoring and resource matching.

In my interaction during the process of mentoring the intrapreneur teams, my biggest take away is that, comparing daily work, the intrapreneurial team exhibits and unlocks greater ownership and potential during work. On the other hand, a successful innovative and entrepreneurial project is not only due to the technology itself, but more importantly, it should and can solve customer pain points, integrate resources and use the appropriate business model to create more value for customers.

Open Innovation however, also requires corporations to open up to types of partnerships. Indeed, cooperation with external startups can often lead to dramatic and rapid changes by enabling to test and develop new business models fast, Olivier stressed. The corporate provides industry expertise and ability to scale-up whilst the startup brings agility and execution speed. This is why Pernod Ricard China organized the Ask Jerry program in order to find the right partner to turn a successful internal initiative into a potential new business.

These are the highlights of the XNode’s roundtable forum for corporate innovation at CES Asia. If you want to find out more about Innovations in corporations, please head over to our XNode blog for more details!

About CES Asia

2018 CES Asia kicked off at Shanghai New International Expo Center (SNIEC). The exhibition featured cutting-edge technology from 500 pioneer companies, covering the hottest and most cutting-edge products and technologies of consumer electronics, including intelligence. Cities, artificial intelligence, automotive technology, the latest robotics and other hot areas. A technology and experience feast will be presented here for everyone. In addition, more than 110 technology leaders will share industry insights at special meetings and look forward to new trends in technology in the future.