After posting the picture on Twitter of the books received I wanted to give some background to offer one person's experience with internal incubation processes at a Fortune 500 Software Company (from now on referred to as The Company).
DISCLAIMER - THOUGHTS ARE MY OWN IMPRESSIONS, AND REFLECTIVE OF MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
A few months back there were all sorts of ideas swirling on how to enable a culture of learning and experimentation at The Company, there were so many bright spots and research driven ideas for the development of new products but we desperately needed a vehicle (Funding, People ready to join the cause, and all the other impediments to starting new things at a big software company).
Having started up two off Brand products formerly and one new product at The Company I have run the gauntlet of incubating solo (or what feels like solo) and I have some scars so I was ready with a healthy dose of skepticism when I heard about our incubation accelerator. We strapped on our helmets and were ready to jump in to fight the aligators if required.
The impediments every company must broach as well as why few embark seriously are; in my mind, as follows:
- How to support something that will not help our next few quarters
- How to support a team (often of your brightest folks) to engage in something that has no guarantee
- How to support something that may compete with one of your existing products
- How to support something that may be misaligned with the well worn paths for Sales, Legal, Delivery, Services. Support, etc
Thats a lot of impediments! and most of those are cornerstones of what passes for "Good Business Practices"
The folks associated with creating some ability to evaluate and induct ideas or "pitches" to the internal incubator did some smart things. - They sought out some external advice
- They really did not try to Adapt it much
- They had a pretty low bar for entry.
Let me unpack those items as I experienced them so far.
The small team I am part of put forth a Lean Canvas This is far better than a PowerPoint Template or filling out some useless entry form as I think the Lean Canvas will be something we use to remind oursolves what we are working for in the coming weeks. It will also be something that we may adjust and have conversations as we proceed and learn more about our problem space, our product differentiators, etc.
So we produced something that had some lasting value.
The review team convened a session to learn about the concepts we were proposing, they all attended, they listened and engaged, and each participant was part of the process. We presented the areas of the canvas in 10 minutes flat, uninterrupted dialog walking the review team thru the concept. One presenter, no extra specified hoops or required contents. We had about 10 minutes of questions following the presentation that our team fielded. The review team came back to us with their feedback in a few days.
This marks the first stage of the Accelerator and this week the three member team I am part of received some reading materials, to help us become part of the same thinking and vision of the review team. This is great because again back to one of the smart things the review team set up - They did not create The Company process or set of ideas, they adapted existing ones that anyone could explore and learn.
If you'd like to get these books for yourself:
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