In at story just published by Fortune Magazine called "Xerox's inventor-in-chief An innovation revival has lifted profits to $1.2 billion." we get Fortune's Geoff Colvin asking CTO Sophie Vandebroek about the innovation revival at Xerox and if the company can keep it up?
Fortune starts off:
If all goes as scheduled, President Bush will hand Xerox's Sophie Vandebroek the National Medal of Technology at the White House in late July. It will be a sweet moment for her and for a company that was built on a world-changing innovation - xerography - but that lost its way for a while in the Digital Revolution.
The story of how Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s failed to capitalize fully on two of the most critical elements of the personal computer - the graphical user interface and the mouse - has become legend. In 2000, then-CEO Paul Allaire admitted that the company's business model didn't work anymore - a conclusion Wall Street had already reached. A year later Xerox's innovation ranking among its peers plunged to tenth (i.e., last) on Fortune's annual list of America's Most Admired Companies. (see chart in article comparing innovation ranking and stock price)
[…]
Recent years have been better. At a shade less than $16 billion, revenues have not changed much since 2003, but Xerox (Charts, Fortune 500) has increased profits every year, added $7 billion in market cap, and more than tripled its profit margins.
One key to the turnaround: Xerox has become an innovation power again, producing new technologies that can read, understand, route, and protect documents, among other things.
Fortune's Geoff Colvin asks CTO Sophie Vandebroek: Innovation may be the hottest topic in business. How can it be a competitive advantage for Xerox?
Sophie Vandebroek replies: It's a matter of making sure that our customers constantly want to buy our products and services. Ultimately innovation is about delighting the customer, and that results in great economic returns for Xerox. If you innovate and it doesn't end up as something that the customer benefits from, then it's not innovation.
Fortune's Geoff Colvin asks: How does Xerox make sure that what it comes up with is not just what the engineers think is cool but what customers actually want?
"It's tough, replies Sophie Vandebroek. "Innovation has two elements."
"No. 1, there is the creative piece, the "Aha!" Moment. These are our own scientists and researchers and engineers, and our partners. A lot of what we do early on is dreaming and innovating with the customers. These are the early moments of understanding and seeing what nobody else has seen before that could result in a great product or service."
"The second piece is the "intrapreneurial" role within Xerox, making sure that this creative idea goes through the whole value chain and becomes the right product for the customer."
Full story here>> […]
Want to know how to continuously delight your customers? Innovation is not a mysterious "hit and miss event" as the above article suggests. There's a tried and true process that focuses in on the cognitive (thinking) skills behind "customer delight" and brilliant strategic thinking in general. It's a process that most entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs can master in less then an afternoon, but that most MBA, business or design schools don't teach. Tools such as "attribute maps" can help entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs design blockbuster products and services. The big secret here is that most small and nible firms are better at this then their larger less-agile cousins.
......Invest in your own thinking skills and become a brilliant strategic entrepreneurial thinker.
Source: Certificate program in Entrepreneurship & Innovation; University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies, St George Campus.
© 2005-2007 Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©
Walter Derzko teaches at the Certificate Program on Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies, which starts in the Fall of 2007
Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "
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- ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
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- ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought." --A. Einstein
- ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko"
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