Today at EMC there will be a “global pause” as the worldwide technical community takes a breather to consider the ideas and technical directions that will propel the company into the future. The 3rd annual Innovation Showcase has taken on a much different feel this year. One thing, however, remained the same: employees from all geographies were encouraged to submit their ideas into a common contest.
This is my third year of active participation in this event. I’m a big fan of anything that introduces a bit of variety into the software engineering lifecycle that I participate in. I’d like to take a moment and discuss the ideas that I submitted. One of the big reasons for getting involved is that the three top ideas receive “instant funding”. This funding is a guarantee that EMC will take the top ideas to the next level.
I jointly submitted two ideas this year. The first one was an Atmos-based idea which proposed some unique algorithms via the introduction of “green” keywords into Atmos meta-data. A co-worker and I were trying to come up with a “green DNS” approach to file-based carbon footprint and wattage reporting. Our idea made the first cut and resulted in a spot in the top 100, but we didn’t get into the top 30 finalists. We’ve already received feedback that our idea was lacking in the “market impact” department. In other words it was a pretty cool idea but we hadn’t fleshed out how exactly it would make money.
The second idea was also a joint effort between myself and Craig Randall. For several years I’ve been involved with digital preservation technology. Craig and I collaborated on an idea that would combine Documentum xCP technology with the growing market for Digital Curation. We made it into the top 100, and also made it into the finalist’s round of 30.
The path to the final 30 was quite different this year. As Stu points out, the popular vote had a much more important role to play than in previous years. In fact, when we posted our idea on EMC’s internal social media network, the discussion it generated was fairly extensive.
What I found interesting was that the discussion surrounding our idea was not primarily coming from EMC’s technical community. It was coming from the EMC Sales community. Craig and I had done some research on the potential sales opportunity for our idea; the interest from our co-workers in the field validated our sense of the market opportunity, and their comments played a huge role in our idea making the final cut. This year, more than ever, EMC is looking for ideas and proposals that can be monetized.
So today we’ll await the final ruling of the judges. In years past all of the finalists were flown to Franklin, Ma for a “science-fair” poster pitch to a set of executives. This year each finalist had to create a set of slides, do a “voice-over” pitch, post their slides internally, and then do a tele-conference with a specific set of judges from around the world. The judges for Craig and I were from Documentum, Document Sciences, Decho, and Celerra.
So the pressure is off this year. There’s no need to pitch my idea in person to an exec (so I’m not wearing a tie today). It’s a day off to travel to a localized gathering and listen live to a broadcast from the CTO team that has traveled to the host facility in Bangalore, India. The day will also be filled with local speakers collaborating on the state of innovation in their specific region. Localized gatherings are also occurring in Beijing, Shanghai, Tel Aviv, St. Petersburg (Russia), Rotterdam, Cork, Paris, North Carolina, California, New York, Seattle, Montreal, and Utah.
In addition to learning about some really cool ideas from my co-workers around the globe, for me the benefit is that the technology community has become a much smaller place. The inventors, Distinguished Engineers, Fellows, and technologists (not to mention the sales community!) are becoming more familiar to each other, no matter where they are on the globe.
Steve
http://stevetodd.typepad.com
Twitter: @SteveTodd
EMC Intrapreneur
