Posts by Steve Todd
Innovation TV Part 2
In a previous post I wrote about my company’s use of EMC TV for the final stages of the innovation process. During that post I mentioned I would also share how internal ideators use the same medium to advance their own innovation initiatives. As promised, here are a full set of elevator pitch videos that ideators created to sell internal ideas within EMC.
Read MoreCede Authority, Grant Autonomy
When Daniel Pink visited EMC’s Leadership meeting in early January of 2014, he focused quite heavily on employee autonomy. In the long term, he reasoned, granting autonomy will increase employee productivity.
Read MoreExtreme Media Lab – What Ideo, Amazon, Comcast, Inuit and EMC "Make"
Recently, I visited the MIT Media Lab for a new form of “meet the students” called What’s Next. I was on a panel with Ideo, Amazon, Comcast, and Intuit (all of us are sponsors of the Media Lab). Each of us had to describe “the things we make” to the students.
Read MoreHigher Purpose
I was offering them a chance to increase their scope. Instead of their purpose of “innovation in one localeâ€, they now had the opportunity to “innovate globallyâ€. This “purpose†is something larger than what was available in their day job.
Read MoreNew Skill: Executive Bartering
In this post I take a look at persuading executives to fork over budget, people, and equipment. I like to call it Executive Bartering: getting executives to agree to give each other resources without knowing it.
Read MoreThe Executive Broker
Given that social media provided an avenue for emerging strategists, there was precious little advice describing how an individual contributor could execute strategy. This is where the role of Invisible Executive was born.
Read MoreInnovation TV
My work with EMC TV has me thinking a lot about the role of video in the innovation process. EMC developed an innovative new technology (VPLEX) that can simultaneously (and instantly) synchronize online transactions to two separate geographic locations. In addition to this synchronization, each location is “active / active”, meaning that the data is fully accessible on both sides (which is extremely hard to do).
Read More2014 Careers: The Invisible Executive
I discovered that I needed to add an additional skill to my personal arsenal: the invisible executive. An invisible executive carries out unapproved corporate strategy using somebody else’s resources.
Read More2014 Careers: Stop Playing Chess, Start Playing Risk
The chess analogy comes from the common experience of being “moved” like a piece on a chessboard. I spent 25 years as a software engineer doing essentially the same exact thing year over year: building and shipping products in the high-tech industry. Some of the most frustrating career experiences were the result of decisions that a manager or an executive would make where I was moved to a new project without due consideration.
Read MoreEMC Innovation Conference in China
I hosted the yearly Innovation Conference in China — marking its 7th year in 2013 — the conference allows EMC employees around the world to pause for one day and consider how to participate in EMC’s corporate innovation activites.
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