Let’s finish up our conversation on putting the practice of Technology R&D into your organization. Just a reminder, the need for this has arisen because technology has crossed the tipping point to the place where it is having a huge impact on the prosperity (or not) of organizations. Couple that with the fact that we have new technologies of every breed coming at a faster rate, and you have this new requirement of putting in some form of tR&D into the organization. Without further ado, the steps we suggest…
- Identify a person that will own this responsibility. Who this person is depends heavily on whether this will be a full time position, or a part of their current job. That call is dependent on how large the organization is. This person must have a curious nature, an ability to digest large amounts of information, a love of technology, and enough knowledge of the business to be able to match new technologies with organizational needs. In other words, this is not an easy job. There is a bit of an art to it.
- Once the person that will have this position is onboarded, you must create a list of areas where technology is most needed – so they have at least some boundaries for what they are looking for. Then our researcher can begin to build a river of information on new technologies so they can stand in the river each day and see what new things are coming on the market.
- As the researcher finds possible new technologies that can be valuable, they create a slide in a PowerPoint presentation that explains the technology and the reasons why they think the organization should invest the resources to integrate it. The PowerPoint will be critical because it will be presented once a month and is the main link between the river of all the possible new technologies, and the few that should be used.
- The researcher presents the latest version of the PowerPoint to the technology team (a team of people from across the organization.) This team may already exist in some form, and if it does not, should be formed. Each new prospective technology should be reviewed and the return on investment discussed. Then the team should make the call on whether to accept the technology into the overall digital plumbing or not.
- Once technologies are approved, they are turned over to the business units to deploy. The researcher has the responsibility to follow up on the approved technologies so they can take an inventory of their overall success rate.
The goal is to create a more robust flow of new ideas and concepts into the organization so the rate of adopting new technologies is sped up. The faster an organization can leverage beneficial technologies, the more they will prosper in the market. This could be the result of everything from lowering costs to improving the topline revenue. Don’t take this process lightly. An enlightened leader knows when to use new tools to make improvements. In order to even have a shot, you must have a good flow of possibilities coming in the door. Organizations can no longer just depend on vendors, or employees to play the role of researchers and developers. It must be organized into a system that creates innovation velocity, which then translates into winning in the market.
Do it not, and you will learn every lesson from a competitor and that will cast you dearly.
Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com