FedScoop's Innovation Summit – The Principles of Innovation
This year’s FedScoop Innovation Summit was an all-star event, featuring luminaries from both government and industry. The day started with a keynote by Symantec CEO, Enrique Salem on “Deconstructing Innovation.”
Salem gave the audience a snapshot into innovation at Symantec. In the “old days,” malware used to travel slowly on floppy disks,and Symantec would update their software once a quarter. These days, with attacks nearly doubling year over year, unique malware strains in the millions, and security concerns about mobility and the cloud, Symantec makes updates available every day. As adversaries become more inventive and prolific with their attacks, companies like Symantec must respond with innovative solutions on a constant basis.
At the same time that these proactive daily updates are happening, Symantec dedicates a large internal workforce to transformative innovation. Salem identified the four key principles of transformative innovation as follows:
- Drives a fundamental change in the customer experience
- Creates a step change in productivity
- Generates a significant cost savings
- The best innovative ideas are often created by small teams
So how do you create a culture that fosters innovation? According to Salem, companies need to hire, recognize and reward people that want to be great and do great things. It’s critical to avoid the “peanut butter syndrome,” the sticky morass where great ideas go to die and the status quo lives on in perpetuity.
So how is the federal government embracing innovation? Stay tuned for my next post.
(Photo courtesy of FedScoop)