How Do You Fund Innovation for Mobile and Digital Transformation?

Last month while in Sydney, Australia I participated in an interesting session taught by my colleague Ajoy Mallik on how to organize a continuous innovation program in-house.  Our client had asked us to help them develop this program.  It was while participating in this workshop that I recognized the value.

Fast forward to today and I am in Denmark experiencing late summer rain and working with a large CPG company and sharing our latest research on Code Halos, enterprise mobility, SMAC strategies and digital transformation.  During the workshop one of the attendees asked the question, "How do you motivate executives to fund innovation?"  It was a great question!  That is a challenge for most companies. Someone needs to pay for it!

The first question might be,  "Can't we just replicate innovation when we find it?"  My answer is that your frontline employees are in the best position to recognize where innovation is needed and how it could most benefit your company.  That kind of specific innovation requires motivation, collaboration and organization, ie., funding!

Your company needs to recognize the importance of continuous innovation - not project based innovation, but systemic.  A system that is continuously asking questions like the following:

• How are SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) developments and trends going to impact your markets, customers, partners, suppliers and your industry?  How are these developments going to change the future, and are your budgets aligned with those changes?
• How is the process of digital transformation going to impact your products and services?
• How are mobile technologies going to impact your brand, marketing, sales and business models?
• How are social media channels changing your market and industry?
• How can you deploy enterprise collaboration solutions to your advantage?
• How can you become more agile as a business, when your ERP and technology vendors are constantly trying to lock you into their expensive and slow paced technology cycles?
• What opportunities and risks are presented by the transformation from controlled PR, branding and messaging, to real-time social media feedback and swarming market behaviors?
• What new risks are being presented to your business models and markets because of all these changes?
• What changes need to happen within your ERPs and IT infrastructure to support a move to real-time information and updates?
• How does your company's organizational chart need to change in order for managers to respond quicker to real-time problems and market opportunities?

All of these issues are here today.  Companies must be continuously addressing these changes and trying new ideas, innovations and processes.  This is at the least, self-preservation, and at the most an opportunity to capture market share and achieve competitive advantages.  The future, if a company is to have one, must be funded.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

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Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin Benedict on Saving Money by Implementing Enterprise Mobility

In this short video, recorded last week in Sydney, Australia, I discuss how investing in enterprise mobility solutions can save you money and capture more sales. Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/WFU627n98ag

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

View Linkedin Profile

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Evolved Mobile Strategies and Business Transformation

Best selling author and innovation expert Daniel Burrus recently described what an evolved mobile strategy looks like in the article titled Does Your Organization Have a Mobile Strategy to Accelerate Growth?  "When you think about mobility, don’t just think about devices and apps and how you might use those. Step back and create a bigger strategy, because mobile is far bigger than that. Instead, ask yourself,"

• How can we accelerate growth
• Gain new competitive advantages 
• Transform all of our business processes
• Transform how we communicate
• Transform how we collaborate
• Transform how we innovate
• Transform how we train
• Transform how we educate
• Transform how we sell
• Transform how we market
• Transform how we share knowledge?

I know we often discuss topics like HTML5 vs. native apps and the different kinds of mobile application development tools and platforms here, and these subjects are important, but the impact of digital and business transformations caused by social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies are having a far greater impact on industries than many people have yet to grasp.

I wrote an article last week titled SMAC, Mobile Collaboration and Google, which explores how Google is empowering social, mobile, analytics and cloud adoption in their solutions.  The ability to have incredible computing power, connections with people, social and collaborative capabilities and access to massive amounts of information at the touch of your finger anywhere there is an Internet connection is today changing the way we live and work.  Does your company recognize this?  What are they doing about it?

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.