Sean Sheppard is the Managing Partner at U.plus. Introducing innovation requires the specialized role of commercialization leaders, either to grow the innovation from within or to find a partner who can from without. Sean shares the attributes of such a leader and how their innovation operating model works. Their functional transformation is a subversive approach toward changing behaviors. They celebrate small wins so their partners can then tell the story to their own stakeholders and continue to get the resources to be successful.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Commercialization leaders: An emerging role to fill a gap
- Portfolio-based approach towards venture-building
- Innovating Bridgestone and growing U.plus 600%
- Survive the recession by investing in your relationships
QUOTES
Innovation in big companies is both inside-out and outside-in Sean: "Outside-in means I have a problem, I think there's a startup out there that could solve it for me. So I go out and I scout and I try and find a startup that I can either buy from, invest in, acquire, or partner with in some way.
And then there's inside-out innovation. We know we can provide a digital version of our current physical experience or we need connected services for our hardware or our equipment, as an example, but we don't have the people to do it."
Usher functional transformation, not cultural transformation Sean: "We do what I call functional transformation. Our approach is we want to find the truth about where our product or service fits with the user or market, what to do about it. We want to create a functional learning organization, now the teams that are responsible for doing it, so we do it at the team level, which is quite possible."
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