Apple Inc. (Photo credit: marcopako )
Today is one of those days. BlackBerry is launching the Z10 in the USA and here we are talking about the iWatch. For very good reasons. The decision yesterday by Google, and earlier in the week Samsung, to announce their own smart watch projects tells us a lot about modern innovation strategies. It is also very pertinent to Blackberry.
In contrast to reader Rachel, who earlier said that Samsung and Google will copy Apple's every move, I have little doubt that Samsung and Google would have projects like this on the bench already. Or at least the component parts of it spread around different projects.
That is simply the nature of the modern innovation business. There are thought to be around 100 projects on the bench at Google's X Lab. Sounds like a low estimate to me. A year ago I interviewed an executive from the P&G innovation team and he told me his group actively managed over 400 innovation projects simultaneously.
In digital the rate of change is faster. In a recent interview with executives from the Washington Post they told me they need people who can upgrade their skills monthly.
These pieces of testimony are what they are - snippets of conversation, online references, impressions. One telecom network infrastructure provider recently bemoaned the lack of benchtime available for his managers. They have to hack their work out in the marketplace with customers and find time to innovate (like at home?).
Innovation is a much changed environment from the days when a giant company complacently allowed a minnow to sneak up with a new product and turn its business inside out. It can still happen, of course. But going back to a discussion here on Forbes a day or so back I'd like to reiterate the significance of strategic options management.
As the P&G example shows, companies need to be managing many hundreds of options at the same time. They need to know the progress of those projects, how they might be accelerated, the changing business case, and the opportunity to stall or implement. And within each of those projects they will have maybe a dozen or more sub-projects. We get a great insight into the depth and breadth of innovation by looking at large enterprise projects on Git Hub, as well as their publicly administered crowd sourcing projects. These are also new developments.
Strategic options management at this level is a organizational skill. The platforms to help with it exist, sort, of but are in need of adapting. Valuation of works in progress lags the reality too. It's as if innovation has outstripped the org, and perhaps that's a good thing.
It was in that context that I offered the opinion that BlackBerry does not have a decent strategic options portfolio. That might be a harsh judgment -Thorsen Heins is doing a great job and executive time is always under pressure. But look how adept Samsung and Google have been in responding to the iWatch.
What the iWatch tells us is that Samsung and Google have dozens of options on the bench, ready to drop into the market not exactly as required, but certainly within competitive time-frames.
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