Innovate With Influence: Global High-Tech

The Innovative Interview #1: Ivory Towers

It's been my assertion that choosing a career as an intrapreneur at a large high-tech corporation can result in a satisfying and rewarding career as an inventor. When interviewing for this type of position it's paramount to investigate and evaluate a company's culture of innovation.

This is easier said than done! Nearly all large, high-tech companies will claim to be innovative.

I suggest that you enter your interview with a set of "big digs" that force your potential employer to "prove it" when it comes to innovation.

Rather than list out a set of stock innovation questions to ask during an interview, I'll be laying out the digs one-by-one in a series of in-depth articles. Each dig will come with a list of follow-up questions to help you burrow deeper.

The first area to explore with a potential employer is whether or not innovation is limited to the "privileged few" that work in what is commonly called an ivory tower. Here are some questions to get started.

Does innovation in your company occur at dedicated research facilities?

If the answer is yes, here is a set of follow-up questions:

• What is the research track record of these facilities? How often are their ideas actually turned into products?
• What is the nature of the relationship between the researchers and the workers in the trenches?

Can you give an example of trench innovation?

• What is the reason for concentrating innovation in specific geographies as opposed to spreading it across the entire employee population?
• What is the nature of the relationship between the researchers and the customers that use corporate products?

If the answer is no, here is a separate set of follow-up questions:

• Where does innovation specifically take place within the corporation?
• What is the mechanism by which the company tracks corporate-wide innovation?
• How can a new employee participate in research and innovation?

Feel free to add your own challenging questions about ivory towers. In general, you want to ensure that you are not joining a company that limits innovation to a particular set of employees. You're looking for a "level playing field", where all employees are encouraged to innovate (this is important even if you are interviewing for a position in a research facility!).

The foundational aspect of innovation at a large company is a keen awareness of customer problems and needs. It stands to reason that the majority of new ideas will be generated by the employees that are most closely interacting with customers. They see all the problems and they feel the customer's pain. Field employees are often the most motivated when it comes to innovating and delivering quickly.

Make sure that trench employees are being allowed to innovate. Ask for specific examples to find out whether or not this is true.

One final piece of advice: ask questions about ivory towers to everybody on your interview schedule (and not just the technical people)! From HR, to managers, and to executives, a truly innovative company should have a well-communicated corporate strategy for innovation.

Software Makes the World Go Around

I’m a software engineer. This gives me a tremendous career advantage in the high-tech industry. The dizzying pace of advances in high-tech is often fueled by innovative teams building new software. When a technology is introduced, I usually dedicate my time to investigate and understand the software architecture behind it. As a software engineer I can learn the new product more quickly and understand it deeply. I have the potential to be much more innovative when I am armed with this new information.

My company (EMC) is large. In fact, EMC has acquired nearly 50 companies this decade. Most of these companies come with unique software assets (along with the experts that created these assets).

In previous posts I have asserted that working as an intrapreneur at a large company can result in a tremendously satisfying and innovative career. It also presents an employee with the opportunity to add “global collaboration” to their resume. At the same time, however, corporate employees wonder how they can grow their influence and stand out in a sea of thousands of employees.

My advice is simple: embark on a daily quest to understand the software architecture of every product in your company’s portfolio.

If it sounds overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. Focus on one at a time. For example:

Earlier this summer EMC bought a company called Data Domain (DD). DD creates a product that accepts huge amounts of information, shrinks that information down to a much smaller amount, and then stores it on disk drives. How exactly does their software perform this process (which is known as “dedup”)?

EMC acquired another company called FastScale. Many corporations use a technology called a “hypervisor” to run multiple versions of an operating system on one server. For example, a system administrator might be able to run five versions of Windows on a single server by using a hypervisor. Running more than five versions may cause the server to run too slowly. FastScale introduces technology that enables many more versions of Windows (or other operating systems) to run on a server. How exactly does their software accomplish this?

I have reached out to specific technologists (my new co-workers) to find answers to these questions. I have read their blogs. I have searched for internal software documentation. At the end of the day I have grown my knowledge about my company’s software portfolio. I’ve networked with new people. I can teach others what I’ve learned.

Most importantly, I can now combine my new knowledge with my own expertise. This is how ideas form, prototypes get built, and new products get proposed.

Most employees don’t strive to understand their corporate software portfolio. Those that do are growing their influence.

You don’t need to be a software engineer to practice this behavior, but being conversant in all things software is a critical career advantage. The best way to learn about software is to write it! I would start by downloading a tool like Eclipse from www.eclipse.org, and start writing your own “Hello World!” software. Search the Internet for articles on “writing Hello World for Eclipse”.

In my particular situation there are so many software assets to understand that I will likely never get to the bottom of them all. I will still accept the challenge because I enjoy the learning aspect. The opportunity to learn (especially from industry experts) is yet another intrapreneurial advantage that is not so readily available at a startup or a smaller company.

The Global Intrapreneur

In my last post I discussed the intrapreneur career choice, and defined an intrapreneur as an employee that delivers his or her ideas as part of a large, high-tech corporation. I also addressed the incorrect stereotype that an entrepreneur is the only career choice when it comes to innovation.

Both careers paths have their pros and cons. When considering which path to take, I am of the opinion that the intrapreneur choice presents a rather significant benefit: a global experience.

Joining a start-up does not necessarily mean that an entrepreneur lacks the opportunity to collaborate with global technologists. It is common for new companies to establish technology teams in two or perhaps three global locations.

A large, global company, however, should already have an established technology footprint throughout the world. Global product development for large corporations is a must-have. Diverse cultures create better products together. Purchase decisions in some countries are based on the presence of a local R&D center. Geographically distributed technologists have greater access to research at their co-workers’ local universities.

Intrapreneurs can have much more global fun tapping into this network of innovation. As an example, let’s explore the world-wide opportunities available at a few high-tech companies.

Consider my corporation (EMC). I work in Massachusetts. I have access to local researchers at Harvard University and MIT. I’m building an information storage device with my co-workers in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina (highest percentage of PhD population in the world) and colleagues in St. Petersburg, Russia (frequent collaboration with St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University). I joined with my co-workers in Shanghai, China and entered an idea in EMC’s global innovation contest. Some of these ideas are on their way to becoming products.

There are additional EMC technology teams located in Ireland, India, Israel, France, and the Netherlands. All of them are tied together on a common social-media backbone known as EMC ONE. This type of global availability is fertile ground for innovation in a way that can’t be achieved by a new start-up.

Take a few minutes and research the global reach and locations of other large, high-tech corporations, such as IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft.

“Globally collaborative employee” is certainly something that you want to write down on your resume; but it’s more than that. It’s an unforgettable way to deliver your ideas.

How can you make your voice heard in these types of globally expansive corporations? This is the essence of innovating with influence, and future blog posts will be covering the basics of global employee impact.

The Intrapreneur

When it comes to a career in high-tech, many of us dream about creating the “next big thing.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re a researcher, a developer, a manager, a salesperson, a marketer, or a field engineer. Any high-tech career exposes you to the break-neck pace of technological advancement.

Have you ever had a great idea? Are you certain that your inventions would be profitable? Do you want to lead a team that delivers game-changing technology to customers?

If so, I have a unique piece of advice for you. It doesn’t matter whether you’re fresh out of school or an industry veteran. My advice is to join a large, global, high-tech company.

This type of advice runs against the grain of conventional thinking. Common wisdom dictates that dreamers deliver their inventions as entrepreneurs at a small start-up. That may still be true, but don’t overlook the equally valid career path of the intrapreneur.

An intrapreneur, simply put, delivers ideas within a large corporation. You may have a long list of issues and concerns with this career path, including:

• • Will my ideas get lost in a large company?


• • Won’t my manager prevent me from doing what I want?


• • How can I influence the executives that make all of the high-level decisions?


• • Don’t large companies move too slowly?

These are all valid questions. Fortunately, I have answers. I’m living proof that a person in the trenches of a large corporation can invent and deliver. I’ve done it time and time again.

It’s all a matter of building influence.

There are three key behaviors that allow an intrapreneur to build influence. They are:

1. Productivity: Corporations put their faith in people that know how to deliver.


2. Initiative: People that deliver earn the freedom to invent on company time.


3. Collaboration: Inventors rely on others to help deliver their ideas.

Intrapreneur = Productivity + Initiative + Collaboration.

Still believe that being an entrepreneur is the best career choice? You may be missing out on the best part of intrapreneurship: the chance to collaborate as part of a global team. Start-ups are geographically limited, but any large corporation worth its salt must have a global footprint in order to survive.

On this blog I’ll be covering the “tricks of the trade” when it comes to global, high-tech innovation. Welcome! It’s my hope that you too will learn how to Innovate With Influence.