• Ferhan Bulca

    Executive leader and intrapreneur with track record in innovative business models. Builder of disruptive, agile teams.

    Creator and Lead Instructor of Business Innovation Certificate program at University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies.

    I offer consulting services and I am available as a speaker for private and public events.

    Watch my recent talk at Ashoka Canada's Changemakers event at University of Toronto on YouTube.

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Canada Suffers from Innovation Ineptness

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Ferhan Bulca, Ph.D., P.Eng.

The Conference Board of Canada published its innovation report card (http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/innovation.aspx). According to the report, Canada has performed poorly among its peer group. The Board lists the following key messages for its report:

  • Despite a decade or so of innovation agendas and prosperity reports, Canada remains near the bottom of its peer group on innovation, ranking 13th among the 16 peer countries.
  • Countries that are more innovative are passing Canada on measures such as income per capita, productivity, and the quality of social programs.
  • So far, there are no conclusive answers—or solutions—to Canada’s poor innovation ranking.

In this post, I will comment on one area: commercialization.

Canada receives “B”s in two metrics: New Firm Density and Public R&D Spending. Also, it scores a “B” in Ease of Entrepreneurship Index. The pitiful scores in the rest of the metrics indicate that while Canada has a good enough mechanism to produce good input to its innovation pipeline, but it fails to move opportunities to the finish line. This is a failure in commercialization.

The failure is not due to lack of trying but it is due to poorly conceptualized and poorly implemented solutions. The Board, in my opinion, wrongly recommends that “universities should take a leadership role in developing individuals with both specialized financial analysis skills and expertise in managing commercialization.” There are many expensively failed examples of universities trying to handle commercialization. One should first ask whether universities and arms-length institutions to universities ever successfully established a systemic commercialization mechanism. The answer is, unfortunately, no! In spite of a rather miserable track record, university-affiliated commercialization institutions continue to gobble up millions of dollars of public money. The solution to this problem is not to create institutions inside institutions, with many directors and lofty but unfulfilled mandates.

We already have better examples in privately established organizations. Take Extreme Startups (http://www.extremestartups.com), for example. A small and nimble organization with a much better track record of commercialization than multi-million-dollar university-affiliated public institutions.

My personal experience with entrepreneurs, although a small sample size to be statistically significant, indicates that entrepreneurs prefer to work with small and nimble organizations instead of their bloated public cousins.

So, here is a simplistic solution idea: Dismantle all publicly established, university-affiliated commercialization offices and support private organizations that serve the purpose of commercialization. A results-based funding system would separate the real performers from money-suckers. Naturally, establishing such a system requires more in-depth work than I can fit into a reasonable-length blog post but it is not rocket science (I should know as I used to be a rocket scientist).

I welcome your comments on my blog. Please feel free to contact me at ferhan@ferhanbulca.com with relevant comments, ideas and thoughts.

Filed under: business, Commercialization, Innovation | 1 Comment »

Entrepreneurs Had a Good Run. Intrapreneurs Are Next!

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Ferhan Bulca, Ph.D., P.Eng.

An article on Fast Company states that “Startups get all the glory when it comes to innovation, but intrapreneurship – or, creating from within an established company – is much trickier.” It is true entrepreneurship is being portrayed as the cool thing to do these days. It is like the .com days in the 90s. Those days, if a company had “.com” in its name, it had to be great. These days, if you are starting a company, you may be the next big thing. Well, I hate to tell you this but most entrepreneurs of today will go the same way as many .coms of the 90s.

Intrapreneurs, on the other hand, thrive and perform their skills in large organizations. These days, most large organizations are shying away from big (i.e., risky) investments. With large cash reserves, they are waiting for the right moment to step on the accelerator, so to speak, for innovation.

In a few earlier posts (check out this, this and this), I shared my opinion on what makes an intrapreneur successful. The article on Fast Company is a nice complement to my experience and observations. More importantly, it is indicating that the time of intrapreneurs is approaching.

To re-iterate what I said in an earlier post, large organizations that recognize the value of intrapreneurs and allow them to leverage the strengths of the organization can become the catalysts of innovation. I believe that intrapreneurship will become an important area to focus for companies in 2013.

I welcome your comments on my blog. Please feel free to contact me at ferhan@ferhanbulca.com with relevant comments, ideas and thoughts.

Filed under: business, Commercialization, entrepreneurship, Innovation, Intrapreneur | Leave a Comment »

Art of Starting a New Business in a Large Organization

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Ferhan Bulca, Ph.D., P.Eng.

These days there is a lot of emphasis on entrepreneurship and start-ups. Intrepreneurial activities, on the other hand, are mostly off the radar of bloggers and authors. As I stated in an earlier post, I believe large organizations can have an innovative advantage if they know how to use it. And, it is a big “if”! The secret sauce is in the organization’s culture. When the culture is open to change, the infusion of innovation can be done publicly and quickly. Otherwise, a more controlled but still transparent infusion is the way to go. Either way, the main ingredients of this secret sauce are the same:

Leadership

It all starts and dies with the leaders. We need a flag-bearer, a visionary, a committed person who can assemble, motivate and support the cast of characters that will join and leave along the way. The leader needs to be behind the initiative because of belief and commitment, not for personal benefits. This is usually where most large organization initiatives fail. It is hard to find that person who wants to do whatever it takes out of pure commitment to the cause. This feature exists in entrepreneurs and founders. They put their heart and soul into what they believe. That is hardly the case in larger organizations, where many political forces are at play. An innovation leader in a large organization has more responsibility on their shoulders than an entrepreneur does. The job of an innovation leader is roughly a combination of those of an entrepreneur, a VC board member and an independent advisor.

Commitment to Long-Term

Innovation typically requires a substantial investment with a hope for future return. There is an upfront investment of resources (money, time, effort). The hope is that return on investment will be substantial and timely. Well, one of these (amount and time) or both may fail, especially the first time around. As s0meone said “all overnight successes have been in the works for a decade.” This is true for startups and it is true for innovation initiatives at large organizations. Commitment needs to be to long-term success, not a quick win.

Inclusive Behaviour 

Organizations have many micro-structures that obey Newton’s third law of motion. That is, they apply an equal and opposite force to the innovative forces being applied. Exclusive and secretive behaviour fuels this attitude as departments and divisions try to maintain what they are mandated to do. The solution is to exhibit an inclusive and open attitude towards supporters and resistors alike. While not all resistors will become supporters through an inclusive behaviour, they are guaranteed to resist in the face of a secretive behaviour.

I welcome your comments on my blog. Please feel free to contact me at ferhan@ferhanbulca.com with relevant comments, ideas and thoughts.

Filed under: business, Culture, Innovation, Intrapreneur, leadership, Team dynamics | 1 Comment »

Innovation is a Skill, Not a Job!

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Ferhan Bulca, Ph.D., P.Eng.

A few days ago, I had a conversation with a colleague who made a statement that I used in the title of this post: “Innovation is a skill, not a position or job description.” I wholeheartedly agree with his statement.

Our Business Innovation Certificate program at University of Toronto primarily attracts entrepreneurs and middle managers. These two groups of people face different challenges. In a couple of earlier blog posts (here and here), I wrote about the differences between an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur. Middle managers fit into the description of intrapreneurs, at least the ones who come to our classes.

The most common challenge among intrapreneurs is breaking through the culture of their organizations to bring new and experimental ideas to life. As they correctly notice, taking an idea through the treacherous path of commercialization is their true challenge. There is no one simple solution to this challenge and, in my opinion, this is why innovation is a mystery to many organizations. To deal with this mystery, organizations typically add “innovation” into job descriptions and titles, hoping that if it is somebody’s job, that somebody will be motivated (or, obligated) to figure it out. WRONG!!!

Innovation, in fact, is a personal skill that needs to be developed and nurtured. Innovation, just like any other skill, requires a supporting environment (organizational culture) and relevant tools and techniques to practice it. Therefore, the role of organizational leaders is to create such an environment where people are motivated, not obligated, to learn, practice and improve their innovation skills. Culture of an organization is the one single thing that makes or breaks innovation. All leadership energy needs to focus on creating an appropriate culture or modifying the existing one to support innovation. It is not an easy task but it is possible. Just one hint, do not start with making it a job title or part of job descriptions.

I welcome your comments on my blog. Please feel free to contact me at ferhan@ferhanbulca.com with relevant comments, ideas and thoughts.

Filed under: business, Culture, Innovation, leadership | 2 Comments »

Encouraging Innovative Behaviour in Large Organizations

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Ferhan Bulca, Ph.D., P.Eng.

Recently, I asked for input on blog topics and received this request: Interested in your thoughts on how to encourage employees to be innovative/entrepreneurial in large organizations, when the organization’s structure & measures encourage different behaviours. Also, interested in your thoughts on Gary Hamel’s hypothesis that management (i.e. the structures & principles invented by Taylor, Smith, Ford et al) needs to be re-invented.

This request came at an interesting time for me as I was re-reading Hamel’s book titled The Future of Management. So, here are my thoughts, for whatever they are worth…

First, let’s tackle the question about how to encourage innovative/entrepreneurial behaviour in large organizations when the organization’s structure and measures encourage different (typically, the opposite) behaviour. Until recently, my typical response to this question would go along the lines of creating a separate team culture inside the organization, a la Skunkworks, and protecting the team from the damaging effects of its established (sometimes for a good reason) execution-focused culture. However, a speech by a friend, Edwin Jansen (@EdwinJnsn, www.mouvment.com) made me give it a deeper thought. My realization was that, in fact, there need not be two cultures and an execution-focused culture is not necessarily the obstacle.

Inspired by Simon Sinek and Dan Pink, Edwin summarized three most important attributes for leading innovation:

  • Meaningful work
  • Passion and dedication
  • Willingness to fail (and, learn from it)

Let me pause here and blend in the second part of the question: do I agree with Hamel that management needs to be re-defined? Short answer: YES!!!! Did I say that loudly enough? And, this is where Edwin’s three attributes come into picture. Management principles and techniques developed by Ford, Taylor et al were relevant when industrial revolution happened. It somewhat worked as we transitioned from a labor-based workforce to an information-based work force. The “somewhat” part became the focus of many patchwork adjustments to those management principles that “stood the test of time.” In my opinion, they are antiquated and they have gone way past their useful lives. The fact that we still see innovation and effectiveness as a dichotomy in business supports this hypothesis. Innovation and effectiveness are not two separate, conflicting concepts. Businesses that cannot combine these two concepts in one way or another are destined to disappear from the map, sooner or later.

This blog posting is running the risk of being too long already. So, I will summarize my theory: Management practices have to change to support and encourage the three attributes mentioned above for successful innovation. This means management exposing itself, taking more risk and learning to fail themselves. The desire to introduce tighter controls on the workforce only backfires. For example, how many of those companies initially blocked Facebook still continue to block them? If you company is one of them, keep dreaming that your employees are more efficient because of the block. On the other hand, how many companies that trusted their employees to do the right thing came up with ground-breaking innovation. A bunch come to my mind, what about you?

As a parting teaser, I will also throw in this: Similar to the management principles and techniques, our education system needs a fundamental overhaul to deal with the challenges of future. The teacher (who, supposedly knows it all) and student (who, supposedly knows nothing) model is no longer valid. Nobody needs a repository of knowledge to pull from any more. Knowledge and information are readily available when one needs it. The skills that need development through our education systems are:

  • Ability to simplify complex matters
  • Ability to make meaningful connections
  • Ability to create social and material outputs

Let’s stop here and leave the topic of education to a later posting.

I welcome your comments on my blog. Please feel free to contact me at ferhan [at] ferhanbulca.com with relevant comments, ideas and thoughts.

Filed under: business, Innovation, leadership, management | 1 Comment »

Making Innovation Everybody’s Job

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Ferhan Bulca, Ph.D., P.Eng.

Class after class I receive the same question as I teach my course on Business Innovation at University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Education: How do you make innovation everybody’s job?

The fundamental principles are easy and Dan Pink (http://www.danpink.com/drive-the-summaries) stated them succinctly. Three things motivate people to their best and create best results:

  • Purpose -  the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves
  • Mastery – the urge to get better and better at something that matters
  • Autonomy – the desire to direct our own lives

If people feel and experience an environment, where these three components are engrained in their daily professional lives, they will happily make innovation their jobs. Let’s take a look at what most, if not all, corporate warriors actually experience instead.

Sloganism without Purpose

Take your regular management and all-hands meetings where business goals are shared, sometimes to adrenalin-rushing background music. You may feel good about the show C-level puts on but do you feel like you have an inspiring purpose to run back to your desk/lab/kiosk and start doing things better, faster, cheaper? I doubt that you do.

On the other hand, take Vijay Govindarajan’s $300 house vision (http://www.300house.com). Govindarajan simply explains how a $300 house can help billions of people on the planet and challenges everyone to contribute to such a house. Does that inspire you to do something new, novel and amazing? I would think so.

Hierarchy without Autonomy

Hierarchy may help you run your daily business but it won’t help you inspire people to do better everyday than they did the day before. For some reason, we all realize that we are at our best when we can decide for ourselves. But, most people do the exact opposite when they take on a management/leadership role. Even spectacular examples (eg. Linux, Wikipedia) of self-driven success do not deter many from their iron-handed approach to manage others.

Management without Mastery

Almost all companies I have dealt with emphasize the need to create detailed job descriptions, processes and procedures. These are presented to the employee under the disguise of “providing clarity of expectations” and are used for basis for discipline if not met. Training requests of employees are routinely turned down because “they are not in line with the company’s expectations”. How many people feel trapped in their jobs with nowhere to go? Taking away opportunities to build mastery does that to people.

Bottom Line

As I have been advocating before, large organizations have many advantages if they can overcome the obstacles I describe above. There are examples of organizations that successfully overcome these obstacles but their numbers can be significantly improved with appropriate leadership practices.

I welcome your comments on my blog. Please feel free to contact me at ferhan [at] ferhanbulca.com with relevant comments, ideas and thoughts.

 

Filed under: business, Culture, effective, entrepreneurship, Innovation, Intrapreneur, leadership | 2 Comments »

Which One Has Priority: Strategy or Execution? How About Both?

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Ferhan Bulca, Ph.D., P.Eng.

An article I read in strategy+business prompted me to write on a topic I have been sitting on for some time. The article I am referring to is titled “Strategy or Execution: Which One is More Important? (http://www.strategy-business.com/article/cs00005?gko=733e9&cid=20121009enews&utm_campaign=20121009enews).

In a nutshell, the authors heard from business leaders that “execution is more important than strategy.” The authors’ response to this input is that “you cannot have good execution without good strategy.” First, let me state that I fully agree with the arguments of the authors. I guess I fall into the category of “seasoned strategists” they refer to.

Having said this, the authors’ observation and, possibly, frustration are no different from what I feel when I discuss innovation with business leaders. A critical component of designing an innovation program for an organization is to understand and articulate its business strategy. And, articulating a strategy goes beyond slogans and animated speeches. Enough has been said about what strategy is and how to build one. Just like everything else, building a solid strategy is lots of hard work. But, I am not going to dwell on strategy-building in this posting. Instead, I want to discuss the fact that business leaders think that they have to make a choice between strategy and execution. In fact, they have no choice. If they take their fiduciary responsibility seriously, that is.

Business leaders have two distinct responsibilities:
1) Successfully compete today (i.e., make money today)
2) Position the organization for future success (i.e., make money tomorrow)

Focus on execution means business leaders clearly understand the importance of (1) but leaving strategy behind means they do not get the importance of (2). The typical defence is “if the business does not survive today, there is no tomorrow.” I think this thinking is the kiss of death for businesses. Unfortunately, businesses build their organizations around execution and they keep perfecting it. It is tangible, gives immediate results and makes the leaders look good. The problem arises when the concept of strategic innovation comes to picture.

First, unclear or poorly articulated strategies result in disjointed innovation attempts. These initiatives are typically misguided and produce very poor results. In some cases, they may even hurt the business.

Second, trying to perform strategic innovation in an execution-minded environment and organization is doomed for failure. And, these are not the learn-from-your-failures type of failures one would expect to have in innovation initiatives. These are “I told you to not mess with my department” type of failures, which only create frustration and animosity. In my experience so far, execution and strategic innovation do not mix. Until a level of market success delivered by the innovation initiative, it should be kept outside the execution engine of an organization. Unfortunately, my experience is in line with the authors of the article I mentioned above. Organizations know how to build execution excellence but they do a very poor job in building strategic innovation excellence. In fact, it is not a choice between the two. Great organizations have to do both equally well.

I welcome your comments on my blog. Please feel free to contact me at ferhan@ferhanbulca.com with relevant comments, ideas and thoughts.

Filed under: business, Innovation, leadership, management, strategy | Leave a Comment »

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