Cultivating a culture of innovation

Cultivating a culture of innovation

Ashwin B (ashwin.b@emc.com)

What are we doing right?

• Hardware and Resources• Cloud VMs.• High powered laptops

• Encouraging Self learning.• Pluralsight

What we need• Have a solid foundation of skills.• Have a strong network of skilled people.

Credibility • We need to do awesome

things.• We need other awesome

people to know that we are doing awesome things.• Other awesome people

should want to work with us.• We get to learn from

awesome things from them.

Encourage culture of building things• Things that are built have more credibility.• Ideas are dime a dozen. • There is no space at the bottom.• A vacuum at the top.• Absence of need for implementation

encourages frivolous “ideas”.

What we should be doing

1. Expand the Self learning umbrella2. x-BU socializing at the grass roots level.3. Public source code repositories.4. Public Blogs and newsletters5. Hands on workshops.6. Hack days and mash-a-thons.7. Show and tells.8. Podcasts/webcasts.9. Events / Demo booths.10. User group meet ups and flash talks

Expand the self learning umbrella

• Coursera• Code Academy• Khan Academy• Stanford Online• Many more…..

x-BU Socializing at the grassroots level• Incentivize x-BU connectivity.• Encourage employees to reach out to • Employees from other BUs.• New acquisitions.

Public source code repositories

• Good code brings credibility.• Feel good factor in publishing something of

your own.• Builds credibility of the organization.

Public blogs and forum participation

• Personal public blogs – non-curated.• Newsletters – Curated.• Improves written communication skills.• Public display of knowledge improves

credibility.

Hands on workshops

• Technical thought leaders can explore and deep dive into any of the new technologies.• Developed some expertise.• Pass on the acquired knowledge to the rest

of the team.• Recordings can be submitted to EAS, other

avenues.

User Group Meet-ups & Flash Talks

• Focused meet ups specializing on a specific technology.• Scheduled meetings where enthusiasts

meet, share knowledge, discuss and collaborate.

Hack events and Mash-a-thons

• Employees form teams and come up with ideas.• Implement a something tangible

within a given time frame.• Encourages the culture of building

cool things.

Show and Tells

• Provides a platform for an employee to showcase anything cool that he may have built.• Can be a tool, a utility, a POC, a full

fledged demo.

Podcasts /Webcasts

• Can be a quarterly, or a monthly deliverable.• Improves communication skills. • Credibility.

Events / Demo booths / Road shows

• Internal events hosted by EMC Consulting.• EMC employees speaking in external

events.

Points based a la carte goal measurement• Each activity is assigned a

predefined weightage of points• Freedom to choose any activity of

his liking.• As per his level of competency

and motivation.• The total number of points

should add up.

Provide avenues• Everybody brings a

distinct skillset to the table

Build it and they will come.