The Role of CEOs in Innovation

Recently, Joe Tucci, CEO of EMC Corp. the $6B info storage and management firm wrote a worthwhile piece in the October issue of Chief Executive magazine. Titled, The Role of CEOs in Innovation, Tucci's points are these:

U.S. dominance in technological innovation is not destiny. Manchester, England was the 18th century center of technology, capitalists, skilled labor and interdependent suppliers and competitors, but lost its dominance to India and the Far East when they stopped innovating. Sound familiar?

Innovation is more than R&D and generating “new” products. Equally important is generating new ways of doing business, of managing the tension between the impulse to avoid risk and the payoff associated with rational risk-taking. It's avoiding “group think” and encouraging (sometimes forcing) colleagues to ask, How is our market changing? Are we changing with it? Or even better, how can we reshape the market to our advantage?

Innovation comes from increasing your company's exposure to unconventional thinking.

Admittedly, many companies are still smarting from the tech bubble crash of several years ago, but ultimately if you force your company to think and ACT differently from the rest, the market will reward you handsomely.

So, what is your company doing to break out of the pack? Are you creating your future, or running as fast as you can to react to someone else's ideas? What's the last “unconventional” thing YOU did?

GMS