381: Tactics for increasing the innovation capacity of your organization – with Kapil Kane

Integrating the advantages of large organizations and startups – for product managers

Today we are talking about how your organization can more effectively innovate, using precious resources wisely to create new value. We may not talk about your organization by name, but what we will learn together will certainly apply and help you.

Joining us is Kapil Kane, the Director of Innovation for Intel China. He is also the founder of GrowthX, a corporate startup accelerator. His experiences have helped him integrate the advantages of large organizations, like Intel, with the scrappiness and agility of startups, and we get to benefit from the insights he’ll share with us.

Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers

[1:38] What does your role involve as the Director of Innovation for Intel China?

I have three main goals: create and orchestrate one innovation strategy for Intel China, grow and transform our talent and get them skilled in the methodologies of innovation, and bring bottom-up innovation ideas from our employees into the pipeline. Ultimately we want to deliver business growth and people growth.

[4:18] How does GrowthX fit into your work?

Intel lets our employees have free time to work on their ideas. In the past, we saw many amazing innovations created across China, but we couldn’t get those innovations to land in the market and get commercialized. We wanted to close this gap. We came across startup accelerators that help startups by providing business coaching, lean startup methodologies, and mentors. We decided to create such an accelerator inside Intel, which became GrowthX. We start with a technical proof-of-concept and build and validate a business case through a cohort approach, in which we pick five to six teams and twice a year do 16 weeks of acceleration with eight different sprints, each focusing on different aspect of business.

[8:29] What are some practical ways existing organizations can more effectively embrace innovation? What have you seen work, and what should we avoid?

Initially we tried to create a centralized innovation center in charge of all innovation initiatives. It didn’t work because the people who created the initiatives didn’t want to lose control of their ideas. Now, different groups do their own ideation activities like hackathons, but we also have some activities for everyone. This year, we’re organizing a giant hackathon for all employees.

You need to provide avenues to carry on ideas. Don’t just give someone a certificate after a hackathon and then not let their idea go anywhere. We have programs that give seed funding to ideas from hackathons and self-ideation.

We tried accelerating innovation by simply funding ideas that have been incubated and having biweekly checkups to see the progress and guide our employees. We soon realized we needed to bring in more business coaching and methodologies. We brought in external coaches who taught our employees frameworks.

We wanted our employees to feel they’re the founders of their ideas. We brought GrowthX outside of Intel and started operating our accelerator out of a coworking space to get innovators to think and act like real entrepreneurs and be completely responsible for moving their ideas forward. For the last four years, once a week all our innovators meet at the accelerator, and the rest of the week they have their day jobs.

This year we’re creating the GrowthX Academy, an online platform where any employee can study innovation tools at their own pace, anytime, anywhere. They end up with a business case they can bring to the next level of the program.

[16:51] How do employees balance working on their new ideas and working their day jobs?

An idea can get an initial seed fund of $5-10 thousand. We allow employees to spend 10-15% of their time developing their idea.