Corporate Innovation

Podcast Version.

Introduction

Since my early days in technology, I’ve been captivated by a fundamental question: how do we consistently generate new products and services that drive growth and productivity at speed? This question has propelled me on an insightful journey across diverse organizations, where I’ve witnessed firsthand how technology can drive powerful change when applied in the right environment. It began at Accenture, where I discovered the fundamental need for a collaborative and explorative environment for technology to truly flourish.

The challenge isn’t just about doing innovation; it’s about creating a sustainable culture of innovation that continuously delivers valuable outcomes. This article shares my experience and the key lessons I’ve learned from leading innovation at global companies such as GE Capital, Standard Chartered, Central Group, and Siam Piwat. These include the importance of empowering tech teams, strong business/technology collaboration, agile approaches, and a mindset of continuous experimentation, moving away from traditional vendor-led innovation.

Section 1: Laying the Groundwork: Empowering Tech and Business Collaboration

While developing the IT Strategy Methodology at Accenture, another Senior Manager and I spent four intense days and nights working on it. This experience taught me a crucial lesson: technology must be understood within its business context, but the business shouldn’t solely dictate technological outcomes. It’s vital to create a space where technical staff can experiment and explore new ideas. Later, these explorations can lead to productive brainstorming sessions with business stakeholders, resulting in practical applications grounded in a strong understanding of the technological fundamentals.

I applied this philosophy at GE Capital (GE Money) by collaborating closely with Sun Microsystems’ core Open Source Team. Together, we invented a groundbreaking ‘wrapper’—essentially a software layer and communication format that simplified the complex system managing over 400 million global customer accounts. This wrapper, which we later contributed back to the open-source community, enabled real-time insights, transactions, and analytics, all using freely available software. Sun joined us because of the technical challenge; nothing like it had been done before. It required significant effort to create this translation layer, develop a composable user interface (a micro-frontend framework tailored for each country), and establish standard integration points (APIs) for each business unit worldwide.

The result was a transformative change for GE Capital globally. We transitioned all countries to this real-time, internet-connected system. This created a single global integration point for companies like Amazon and Dell. Through this, their customers, regardless of location, could instantly apply for GE-backed loans or credit cards directly from the e-commerce store. For example, an Amazon customer in Thailand could get a Thai credit card or loan, while a customer in Germany would receive a German equivalent. Because the software itself was free, our only costs were infrastructure. This enabled all global GE Capital businesses to offer real-time online banking, resulting in a significant financial uplift.

This success with open source at GE Capital also allowed us to contribute to other GE-owned companies. For example, we were able to share our expertise with NBC Universal (then a part of GE) during the initial development of Hulu.com. Because Hulu’s business model relied on minimal infrastructure costs to remain competitive, our experience with cost-effective open source solutions proved invaluable.”

• Key Learnings: For innovation to thrive, technology must be understood as a business enabler, not just a support function. Open source and cutting-edge technologies are often the keys to unlocking new possibilities. It’s essential to create an environment where tech teams have the space to experiment without being strictly limited by business demands and partner with some of the best in the industry. This drives essential business outcomes, here enabling GE Capital Global Consumer Finance Platform and then the new business of Hulu.com.

Section 2: The Power of Piloting: Agile Experimentation at Standard Chartered

My curiosity about a new technology called “Hadoop”, later called “Big Data”, led to another pivotal learning. After talking with early Hadoop users from CBS and others, I saw its potential. Standard Chartered was driving its new data insights strategy, so with the Hadoop Version 2.0 ecosystem emerging, it seemed like a perfect fit to process large and near real-time data at scale. We launched a small pilot project using search (Solr, and early implementations of Elastic, both with Lucene). It quickly revealed insights, like under performing business relationships. This simple pilot gave the green light for us to significantly expand our operations in 2013, culminating in a team of over 1000 people.

The ongoing tech changes the bank invested in became the pre-cursor to “SC Innovate,” a lab within the IT Department. The facility allowed strong tech talent to experiment with technologies, while business users from the line could participate in design thinking workshops. This fusion of technical expertise with business needs led to testing of ideas using short 4-6 week projects and a real-time user/customer facing test, with an actual user. This approach gave rise to digital banks like Mox and Nexus, among other innovative solutions.

• Key Learnings: Rapid, iterative piloting is crucial for identifying valuable innovation opportunities. Creating a space where tech and business teams can collaborate on short-cycle projects helps test and refine ideas quickly, leading to more successful implementations. This requires courage to allow both technology and business staff to have the space to test out ideas and to drive new ones.

Section 3: Innovation Labs and Community Engagement: Driving Value at Central Group

In the rapidly evolving retail and e-tail environment at Central Group, with Thai customers being among the fastest adopters of new innovations globally, my focus shifted towards establishing a dedicated innovation hub. Given our mandate to drive global digital transformation and innovation, we established CTRL (Central Tech Retail Innovation Lab) in Chiang Mai in 2017/18, being one of the first Thai corporates to do so. This was also followed by a later expansion in 2020 and partner with AWS to become the first global AWS retail innovation lab.

The KPI for Innovation was to deliver 4 innovation projects with end-users/customers per year. The team would explore new technologies, partly in collaboration with partners like AWS. In Bangkok, we established a Chief Innovation Officer role, supported by a Business Innovation Manager. We also engaged with the broader innovation community, working with organizations like the National Innovation Agency (NIA) in Thailand, as well as, local and global startups. This approach facilitated an exchange of ideas and access to new technologies, while also providing potential startups with commercialization opportunities.

Pilot projects in Chiang Mai included empty shelf detection, self-checkout in grocery stores (“TopsBox”), and footfall counting. For TopsBox one of the learning was that many Asian grocery customers actually prefer talking with cashier, rather than a anonymous experience, which is always fitting more a convenience store.

A critical project was the development of a blockchain-based staff app which created an internal token that staff could earn and exchange. It incorporated facial recognition for office access, temperature checks, and even partnerships with local coffee shops offering perks to staff using the app. Based on its success, it became a global Central “C Coin App,” usable across the entire group’s staff and retail outlets.

• Key Learnings: Innovation needs an owner, a team dedicated to exploration and experimentation. Innovation labs, when coupled with community engagement, accelerate the learning process and expand the scope of innovation possibilities.

Section 4: In-House Development and Partner Ecosystems: Siam Piwat and Xponential

Siam Piwat’s structure, with close collaboration between executives and all layers, has led to constant innovation and changes. Leveraging business partners and the broader tech community has been critical. The launch of the One Siam Super App reflects this philosophy; it goes beyond just e-commerce and loyalty, and aims to give customers convenience with a range of in-mall features and engaging content, which in turn influenced the development of other consumer apps in the market.

With Xponential, we are taking innovation to the next level. Xponential is a tech spin-off within the group, in partnership with Pivot Digital, with a clear strategy: reduce reliance on SaaS and external IT vendors (except for core cloud providers), drive significantly lower opex, and generate new revenue opportunities on its own.

This in-house developed platform and highly skilled teams form the foundation for future innovation for Siam Piwat Group, drive Co-Innovation with Business Partners to generate new Products and Services, and generate new revenue opportunities trhough the PropTech Industry globally.

This makes innovation less budget-specific, but prioritises what needs to be done, using a ‘value creation’ lens. The creation of the AI Innovation and Center of Excellence Team, is part of this same approach, to drive further without linking this is to a big budget approach, but creating in-house capabilities, which will be monetized later on. This enables Xponential to work with other departments in a partner fashion and execute projects faster.

• Key Learnings: In-house development, when strategically pursued, can drive significant innovation, reducing dependency on external vendors. Building an ecosystem with partners and tech firms further accelerates innovation capabilities.

Conclusion: Cultivating a Culture of Innovation

Innovation is critical for sustained growth and improved operational efficiency. Organizations need a process and methodology that enables innovation from every level of the organization. Not limiting ideation to a select few, also allowing Tech Departments the freedom to explore new technologies and then guide the business teams on the possibilities, is crucial. Organizations benefit from decoupling innovation from traditional budgets, to allow for grass-roots innovation. The outcome should always be measured by P&L improvements.

Most importantly, we must abandon the academic planning approach for innovation trials, favoring short segments of 5-8 weeks, with real customers or users. After a successful pilot, similar to a VC model, we can decide on which initiatives to further fund, and then provide detailed cross-departmental plans for larger implementations. It’s essential to keep things agile and lean to deliver the most impact.

Many organizations fail to innovate due to over-reliance on vendors. While vendors can be helpful in some areas, outsourcing innovation developments can be counterproductive due to complex budget cycles, procurement processes (RFP/RFI), and high ROI hurdles.

With the right strategy, the right people, skills, and a growth-mindset, innovation can start today. Even failed pilots provide valuable learning. The focus needs to shift to value creation, rather than purely financial ROI targets.

Call to Action: Embrace the Innovation Journey

Ready to start your innovation journey? Here are some steps to consider:

1. Assess your current innovation culture: Are you truly empowering experimentation?
2. Identify opportunities for collaboration: Can your tech and business teams work more closely?
3. Start small and iterate quickly: Begin with short, focused pilot projects.
4. Engage with your local startup community: Explore partnership opportunities.
5. Embrace a culture of learning: Failure is a part of the innovation process.
6. Shift your focus to Value Creation: Rather than just ROI, aim to solve customer needs.
7. Drive in-house capabilities: Build skills and drive quality output within the innovation framework.

Try it! The path to impactful and rapid innovation starts now.

Contact me or Pivot Digital in case of more interest on how to align Innovation, IT, and Business strategies.