Four tips for innovation leaders, from HPE’s CTO
With her years of experience leading technology companies, HPE’s CTO offers a recipe for innovation success
In the tech world, it’s easy to be captivated by the biggest trends and most talked-about product innovations, whether in the news cycles or onstage. Innovation, however, is not limited to just creating the next big thing. It can just as importantly be about designing a new approach or developing new channels, programs, and experiences that deliver increased value to customers. And, in fact, these often have to be coupled together for the greatest success. But regardless of type, innovation must be partnered with leadership and accountability. No innovation comes to life through dreams alone.
Today I’d like to share four of my biggest takeaways for leading with innovation and winning in technology:
1) It’s about the experience, not the product
Customers have a lot of choice. When they engage with you, they're not just looking for the best product or solution at that point in time, but also the best experience from the day they buy that product to the day that they retire it. Putting the customer at the center of everything – for the entire lifespan of a product – helps you win customers for life. Focus not only on developing the best, most innovative product, but perhaps even more on the experience as the customer uses that product (or a full suite of products!), and continues to interact with your company.
2) Lead through accountability
Innovation doesn’t come to life without accountability. I worked for a CEO once who taught me ‘when you have initiatives that are important, you have to be able to look into your organization and say who wakes up every day with this as the top thing they worry about? And if you cannot do that, then you're not going to get the results that you need.’ I’ve used this approach ever since. I am careful to assign priorities, projects and programs to align clearly to our intended outcomes. It provides clarity to my team as to what my priorities are and who is being depended on to drive the initiative forward.
3) Create company-level innovation programs
What tends to happen in companies, is that they become overly focused on delivering business results. It can be hard to make bets on innovations or experiments when you’ve only got a 20% chance of it turning into something. In addition, many companies operate in business unit silos. Businesses tend to fail when they don't see opportunities between the businesses that they've got. They're structurally set up where competitors can find and take advantage of those seams, and then all of a sudden an opportunity that should have been yours, has been missed. So company-wide innovation programs are incredibly important - they pull together threads and opportunities from across different businesses that can otherwise be lost during day-to-day execution.
4) Prioritize: A quick no is better than a long yes
Prioritizing is key. Rather than trying to do a hundred things, do 10 things really, really well. Focusing on those 10 things and delivering them with excellence actually makes you feel better about your contribution.
In general, everybody wants to do the right thing for their company, and at the same time, everybody has a lot on their plate. HPE CEO Antonio Neri says a quick no is better than a long yes. As an example, let’s say I need help with a program from someone on my team. Assuming they’re willing to help, and are up for the task, we both need to be clear with each other that it’s a top priority. If they happen to say ‘yes,’ but it’s their 10th priority, we’ll end up frustrating each other in a ‘long yes’ as they tackle the rest of their priorities first. This is yet another example of the importance of accountability being paramount in bringing forth innovation and progress.
I look forward to a year filled with opportunities to drive innovation within HPE and particularly for our customers. Please join us for our main company event, HPE Discover, to see the best of Hybrid Cloud, Edge and AI innovation.
About Fidelma Russo:
Fidelma Russo is the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Hybrid Cloud business unit, and the company's Chief Technology Officer. As CTO, Fidelma is responsible for driving innovation across HPE’s global organization and helping our customers transform and succeed. Fidelma's Hybrid Cloud team is tasked with solving some of IT's biggest challenges, including transforming business through the power of data, modernizing IT infrastructure with a true cloud experience, and dramatically simplifying operations across hybrid cloud IT estates - all as they help customers accelerate their adoption of AI. [Full bio]